TEASER

This stuffy politician, John Ruskin, once wrote "government and co-operation are in all things the laws of life." Now that actually sounds wise...until you've worked for our illustrious nation as long as I have, and realized that "government co-operation" is pretty much an oxymoron.

"Special Agent Robert Hobbes for Agent Jones." Hobbes jerked Golda's wheel and the van dodged a pothole.

His partner, Darien Fawkes, ducked to avoid a collision with the ceiling. "Bobby, I was in the hospital two weeks ago. I don't want to go back. OK?" The lanky man shifted the file he had clutched in one hand, trying to find his place.

Hobbes didn't even glance over. He did seem to be watching the road, but he was clearly hearing nothing but the voice on his cell phone. "No, that is not alright! It's urgent--yeah, an emergency."

"Ooh, listen to the amateur con man," Darien murmured, still leafing through the file with one hand, while holding onto his door handle with the other.

Hobbes shot him a dirty look. Hmm, so he was listening after all. Then the older agent visibly brightened. "Yes, thank you! Yeah, I'll hold." A few moments and a block or so later, he asked, "Jones?" His tone had become crisp, focused.

Was this call actually serious? Darien abandoned the file and watched his partner go from polite to infuriated.

"I just wanna know what's going on." There was a brief pause as Jones responded. "Oh, you bet it's my business. We're the ones who stopped that bastard the last two times he started messing around here, that's why. Now you just--" Hobbes broke off and stared at the phone, then dropped it in his lap and turned his attention back to the road. "Little screw-up hung up on me."

Darien tapped the file against his knee. "You going to tell me what that was about, or are we going to finish your little briefing before we get to the suspect's house?"

"Witness, Fawkes. Technically." Hobbes fidgeted with the cell phone, finally stuffing it into his jacket pocket. "You read the file?"

"Some." Darien flipped back to the first page in the file. "You've been tracking a guy selling black market technology. Like what, weapons?"

"Technological weapons, my friend." Hobbes nodded firmly.

Darien frowned. "But we're going to question this 'Bruce Kelley,' not arrest him."

"Bruce ain't who we're after. He's just the middleman. Didn't finish the file, didja?" Hobbes raised an amused brow at his partner.

"Whose fault was that?" Darien asked rhetorically, as Hobbes took a sharp right turn. "Bet I can guess, though. Are we dealing with a terrorist who likes to see how big a mess he can make?"

Hobbes looked a bit disappointed. "Well, Kelley was seen doin' business with Dante, and where that creep goes, boss-man Javier's gotta be close by."

"Yeah, the fanatic and his flunky." Darien took another look at the later pages of the file. "Too bad Dante didn't stay down when I decked him."

"Yeah." Hobbes sighed. "You shoulda nailed the guy when you had the chance. Run him right over on your way to the pier."

"I was a little busy, racing against a bomb, remember?" Darien glared at his partner. "I'm starting to think I should've stayed in the file room today."

"Oh no, partner." Hobbes reached over to slap his shoulder playfully. "Fat Man wouldn't let me go after this guy 'til you were cleared for duty. No more vacation for you."

"Just so we're clear, that was not vacation. It was work, even if it was boring as hell." Darien tossed the file to scatter on the floor at his feet. "Let's do this, get your info, save the world."

"This is serious, Fawkes."

Darien crossed his arms. When Hobbes said nothing more, Darien sighed. "Is that why you keep bugging Jones? He know something about this case?"

Hobbes flexed his hands on the steering wheel before veering into the left-turn lane. "I dunno. He oughta know something, that's what I hear, but he won't say jack."

"Aren't you the guy who once told me 'ignorance is bliss'?" When Hobbes didn't blink, Darien prodded further. "We could just let Jones handle his end."

"You want all those people on your conscience?" Hobbes exploded. "Man's not even remotely competent."

Darien grinned, and slouched back in his seat. "Let's do this right, then."

The address they were headed for turned out to be a bland, cookie-cutter cube: the curse of the lower middle class. Hobbes cruised past and parked Golda half a block further down. Out in the blazing August sun, he slid on a pair of sleek sunglasses before sauntering up the weedy sidewalk. Darien followed, slouching with hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.

A junky car sat in the driveway, but the house was quiet. Hobbes had to pound three times on the dented door before footsteps came hurrying up on the other side. The voice was sharp and suspicious. "Who's there?"

Hobbes waved at the peephole. "I'm lookin' for some hard-to-find parts. Friend of mine said you could fix me up. That a fact?"

The voice, apparently Bruce Kelley, cleared his throat. "Sure. For the right price. This stuff I deal in is rare, meaning it's expensive."

"I get that. And I can pay anything reasonable." Hobbes pulled off his sunglasses, nodded toward the doorknob. "Wanna talk about it?"

"I'll come out." The door creaked open. Bruce Kelley was a pale, beady-eyed figure; Darien wondered for a few seconds if this was what Eberts would look like if he sold illegal tech for a living. "What type of items are you looking for?"

"Whatever my associate didn't pick up from you last week." Hobbes sighed. "Name of Dante? I'm not even sure he remembered to mention me, but--"

At his side, Darien moved, just shifting his weight. Kelley's gaze went to him for the first time, and he sucked in a gasp.

Hobbes shot a puzzled glance at Darien. In that moment of inattention, Kelley turned and bolted back into his house, slamming the door.

"Fawkes, get the back!" Hobbes had his gun out, and half a second later his heel smashed the door open.

Darien leaped off the porch, headed for the gate that led into the backyard. It swung open right under his hands--and he had to throw himself backward, out of the path of Kelley's motorcycle, barreling towards the gate. The erstwhile doughboy gunned the bike right past him and jumped the curb into the street, swerving left.

Darien rolled to his feet, cursing new bruises, and was halfway to the van before he realized that he didn't have the keys. He turned to shout for Hobbes, but his partner was close behind. "Go on! Go!"

By the time Golda's engine roared to life and Hobbes had executed a hard-shifted three-point turn, the motorcycle had disappeared down a cross street. "Left again," Darien said firmly.

Left turn duly taken, Hobbes scanned the street. "Don't see him, Fawkes."

"So he turned again. Check the next side street."

Headed north up the next avenue was a distant bike. "Yeah." Hobbes pushed his speed up a notch, dodging pedestrians and other vehicles. And apparently still had enough concentration left to start a discussion. "You know that guy, Fawkes?"

"Hell no!" Darien felt a brief chill clench in his stomach; it wouldn't be the first time his friends had thought he was mixed up in something hinky.

"Well, he sure knew you, my friend." Hobbes squealed the tires, sloughing round an unexpected turn. And there the idiot was, still speeding. "Oh, you're not fast enough to escape us, buddy," Hobbes said.

Darien braced himself for a quick exit as they pulled up behind the motorcycle. Kelley was glancing around frantically, but the next street was a good block off.

"Don't make me hit you," Hobbes muttered. The light at the intersection ahead turned yellow, and Kelley revved his engine, shooting ahead. There was a sudden flash, he swerved, and then exploded. Golda rocked, and bits of metal clattered across her windshield.

"Crap!" Hobbes stomped on the brakes and tugged on the wheel, trying to avoid the flaming wreckage suddenly filling their lane. Golda skidded, jerked as one of her tires blew, then jumped the curb and smashed into something.

Darien shook his head. The van was tilted at an odd angle, and the windshield was one big spider web of cracks. "Wow. Hobbes?"

Hobbes already had his door open, but paused to rub a tender spot on his forehead. "You OK? I gotta check out the damage here."

"Uh, yeah, I think so." Darien held his door open so gravity wouldn't make it swing back and crush him, then eased out. Hobbes was circling Golda, moaning to himself. Darien whistled soundlessly. They'd run right over a mailbox, of all things, and the van sat with her front wheels spinning off the ground. That didn't even start to take into account the dents and scorch marks from the explosion itself.

Speaking of which.... Darien turned to the still flaming lump in the middle of the street. Pieces of motorcycle were spread over a good half block. Pieces of something else, too. "So much for that intel you wanted. There's not much left of this guy." He started picking his way through the wreckage, looking for anything that would clue them in on what had happened. "Is it just me, or did that not seem like an accident?"

Hobbes crawled out from under Golda, soot and oil smudging his face and suit jacket. "Course it wasn't," he said, disgusted. "That weren't a gas explosion. Not to start with. Besides, Dante'd warned him you might be coming. Nice little expendable decoy for us." He kicked at a fragment of handlebar.

Darien hunched his shoulders. "So there's definitely something big going on." He laughed suddenly. "Nothing like jumping right back into the game."

Sherlock Holmes is the man. Solves nearly every crime in his slippers, smoking a pipe with a little cocaine on the side. My kind of detective, but I gotta argue with him on this one--there is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.

I could do with a lot less stimulation and a lot more of sitting by the fire in my slippers.

"So what did the mechanic say?" Darien finished the Butterfinger he'd bought at the body shop and balled up the wrapper, looking around for somewhere to toss it. The halls of the McKinley building were lacking in trash receptacles so he pushed it into the back pocket of his jeans.

"It would take him a week to get all the parts," Bobby groused, putting his keys and his Fastrak in a pocket. Given Golda's current condition, he wasn't sure what use they'd be, though. "That I should get a newer van. Can you believe that? Golda is a classic piece of machinery. A little past the warranty, it's true, but not ready for the scrap heap, I'm telling you!"

"A little past the warranty?" Darien asked the air, holding open the door to The Official's office so Hobbes could walk in ahead of him. Eberts was in his customary spot to the Official's right, and Claire was already seated near the window, studying some paperwork.

"So, gentlemen, you finally made it in for your report." Charles Borden gave them his patented look of disapproval. Darien ignored the reproach; it was far too much like his uncle's to have any effect on him. He'd grown immune to the "you're-a-screw-up-and-I-had-such-high-hopes-for-you" expression by the time he was 16 years old.

"It's 10 a.m., sir, and we've already had to chase a perp and got caught in the back draft of an explosion," Hobbes said with a certain edge of petulance that Darien approved of. "I smacked my head on the steering wheel and Fawkes has whiplash."

Darien massaged the back of his neck, which was aching, to back up Hobbes' story. "After a morning like this I think I'm gonna need some extended vacation time after all."

Claire rolled her eyes scornfully, "Stop milking the situation, Darien, or you'll be downstairs in a tic for more tests. Which reminds me...."

"Hobbes, you gonna give them the sit rep?" Darien interrupted.

"One word, sir; black market technology," Hobbes said with a confident nod of his head.

"That's three words, actually," Eberts interjected.

"Shut up, Eberts." Bobby made a show of rubbing the bruise forming on his forehead and continued. "Hobbesnet has been buzzing with rumors. Something about a government test of an EMP-proof comm. system up in San Francisco. Could be some of our old friends are up to no good 'cause Dante's been spotted twice in the last few days down here in San Diego lookin' to purchase high-tech devices."

"What kind of devices are we talking about, anyway?" Darien asked. "Espresso makers? Starbucks could use some competition."

Eberts bustled around the desk with two more copies of the report Claire was already looking at. "As Robert said, testing is being done on comm. systems that will be impervious to an electromagnetic pulse, whether it is part of an intentional terrorist attack, or simply the aftermath of a major nuclear detonation. In the event of such an emergency, this kind of system would ensure that government and military communications could remain intact."

"Almost better than high-tech espresso makers," Darien agreed. "That'd put a crimp in one of Javier's pet tricks, huh? Do we know how his little terrorist group is planning to stop this system from being used?"

Eberts shook his head. "Not as such. But several government agencies are involved in these tests, and security is very tight."

"Tighter than what?" Darien questioned curiously. "'Cause I always wanted to break into Fort Knox." Nobody paid any attention to his non sequitur whatsoever, which made him grumpy.

"And why aren't me and Fawkes already up in Frisco?" Bobby asked.

"The residents there prefer San Francisco," Claire put in delicately.

"We haven't been asked to take part in the security end." The Official closed his file as if putting an end to the discussion.

"Hey, what are we down here, chopped liver?" Bobby jumped up impatiently. "Fawkes has got way more skills than most of those yahoos--and, wait a minute, they got that putz Jonesy running the show, don't they?"

"We are not in the loop whatsoever," Eberts said. "So, we have no way of knowing just who is taking part in the operation."

"Of course it's Jonesy, he's always had it out for me. That's why he's not takin' my calls."

"We did kinda throw a monkey wrench in his works the last time." Darien pretended to examine a funny looking bruise on the back of his hand as if he weren't the least interested in going up to the City-By-The-Bay with his best friend. Heck, one day of work and then they could knock off, scarf some crab--what was that thing about crabs only being good if there was an R in the month? Maybe order some wine, take in a ferry ride. Just the thing after his less than satisfactory tour of the deserts of Southern California.

"Agent Hobbes, this isn't our bailiwick. Keep out of it, and get your own work done." Charles Borden did his impression of a boulder, arms crossed on top of his desk blotter.

"So, if that ain't our bailiwick, as you put it, what is?" Hobbes asked with a touch of belligerence. Then, as if remembering his place, he added, "Sir."

"You and Fawkes have some time off." The Official gave them both smile of such malevolent glee that Darien was taken aback for a moment. Was he really hearing what he thought he was?

"Listen, I don't know what a bailiwick is, and I don't even care, but that sounds right up my alley." Darien nodded enthusiastically.

"Paid vacation?" Hobbes specified.

"Of course, paid," Borden agreed, sounding way too happy and generous to be in his right mind, in Darien's opinion. "You are on the US government's payroll, after all and all government employees are allotted a specific amount of time off per year."

"Which we never get," Bobby interjected.

"Well, you do now. Eberts has the figures." He waved at his office manager.

"Sir, are we all getting leave?" Claire asked hopefully. "Because I'd really love to go visit my mother in..."

"Not now, Doctor. You still have duties to perform." Borden shook his head forcefully, until his jowls quivered like a bowl of flesh colored Jell-O.

"Darien has accrued four point eight days off, and Robert has six point four days of unused leave." Eberts announced without actually looking at any employment records.

"That can't be right..." Bobby argued.

"Hobbes." Darien poked an elbow in his ribs. "Take what you can get, buddy. Time off, with pay, when did you ever get that before?"

"When did YOU ever get that before?" Hobbes countered. "Must be a first, 'cause between stealing toasters and selling maps of the stars' houses, your benefits package musta been flat as the proverbial pancake."

"You wound me, you really do." Darien groaned. "C'mon, let's boogie..." He hooked an arm around his partner's neck, practically hauling him out of the office. If they were going to actually get this vacation time, he was going to start using it right then and there. Instead of Northern California, where the weather could be downright foggy in the summer, maybe get in the car, drive down to Mexico for a few days in the sun?

"Y'know, I never got to show you some of the finer aspects of Mexico the first time we were there together," Bobby said, as if reading Darien's mind. That was what made them such a fine team. They thought alike.

"Robert!" Eberts came running after them, waving a hand in the air.

"What is it?"

"I know you enjoy a spot of fishing, so I thought," he paused, as if making sure he had their attention. "That you might be interested in the annual Marin County fly-fishing competition going on this weekend. They have boat trips on the bay, and more sedate fishing trips into the local mountain areas. I've heard that the trout fishing is wonderful on the North side of Mt. Tamalpais, and there are numerous manmade lakes in the Ross Valley area."

"Why are you giving us tips on fishing, Eberts?" Darien asked, dumbfounded.

"Agent Hobbes always wants to know about the latest equipment. Fishing uses all sorts of technical gear, GPS trackers and sonic devices to find...prey."

"I think we're going up North, after all." Hobbes grinned happily. "Thanks, Ebes." He called as Eberts walked confidently back to his closet office, having imparted what he needed to get across.

"I was more in the mood for salsa dancing and tequila." Darien pulled at Hobbes' sleeve, wanting him out of the building and on their way to their first drink with an umbrella in it. "Why the other direction?"

"Because, Gland-brain, Marin County is just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco--and the spy convention we weren't invited to."

"With Golda in the shop for the foreseeable future, what we need is a sporty little number that'll fly up I-5." Darien pointed to the prestigious Avignon Car Rentals one block down from the McKinley building.

"And pay two grand a day?" Hobbes laughed. "Not on my paycheck. We need something reliable, and steady. It's a long, boring drive through all those artichoke fields."

"When you put it that way, Avis, here we come. You think that Hobbesnet is right?" Darien asked. They had stopped in their office before setting out to get the latest on the current trends and situations. Dante sightings were rife up and down the coast, along with certain other highly sought after individuals. "That Javier is on his way up to San Francisco, too? Cause I'm thinking we ought to tell somebody..."

"Fawkes, the 'Fish wasn't interested. He's not listening to anything we say right now, you know that. At least not officially." Hobbes led the way in the opposite direction from Avignon to a mall filled with shops and services geared to the business traveler. There were two car rental places, an REI emporium, a Rand McNally map shop, a Coach leather goods store, a deli and a bookstore. All the stuff they might need for a clandestine road trip. "Eberts gave us the nudge, and that's good enough for me. If we want to stop this SOB, we're gonna have to do it ourselves."

"Not much of a vacation if we're hunting down international terrorists."

"Yeah, but it's a paid vacation, my friend," Bobby said triumphantly, opening the door to let Darien through.

The walls of the car rental office were lined with photos of gleaming mid-size vehicles zooming through exotic ports of call like Istanbul, Caracas, and Tangiers. Darien imagined himself driving fast, zigzagging past a line of unfriendly nationals while he clutched the requisite blonde to his shoulder. They'd fly over the edge of the dock onto some conveniently located yacht that happened to be big enough to land a car, and sail away into the sunset, having once again foiled the bad guys. Might be what happened to James Bond, but never to him. Besides, they weren't even leaving the country. How much action could he possibly expect in San Francisco?

"Need a dark colored four door for a trip up the coast," Bobby said to the perky Avis employee, whipping out his credit card, fidgeting while she swiped the card through the electronic reader.

"Sorry, sir, your credit card has been declined." She smiled with plastic sympathy and handed the MasterCard back. "Do you have any other form of payment?"

"That can't be!" Hobbes protested. "I sent a payment in two days ago."

"By Pony Express?" Darien snarked. "Here, I'll pay, but I want something sportier than that."

"Certainly." She swiped his card through the reader, and typed a few commands into her keyboard. "Mr. Fawkes, you're all set. It'll just be a moment to print up the form. Can I interest you in some additional insurance?"

"With his driving, you'd better." Hobbes leaned petulantly against the counter, grumbling to himself about the postal system.

"My driving? Hey, does it have a CD player?" Darien asked hopefully, signing his name on the line. At a rate of twenty-nine dollars a day, they were getting a top of the line, "A Hummer?" he read joyously. "That's fantastic!"

"Last one on the lot today." The girl held out a set of keys. "And CD players are standard on all our Hummers, as well as side door air bags and a GPS tracking system, in case you get lost."

"I get to drive first." Darien practically raced Hobbes out to the garage to behold the huge, square camouflage-green Hummer waiting for them.

"That's what I'm talking about." Bobby sighed in sheer appreciation for the magnificent piece of machinery. "Fawkes, you haven't had any experience with military vehicles, so I should drive first. Just to break her in."

"Huh, what experience? You've been driving a 15-year-old Econoline van for the last decade. It's my turn, pal." Darien was already in the driver's seat fiddling with the knobs and buttons by the time Hobbes clambered into through passenger door. "San Francisco, here we come."

"Open up your Golden Gates, Hobbes and Fawkes are on the way." Bobby pumped his arm like a quarterback who just made the winning touchdown.

Their first stop was at Bobby's place to pick up his gear, then on to Darien's for his overnight bag. Fawkes managed to retain possession of the keys in spite of Hobbes' ongoing insistence that he really should be the one driving, since he knew the way. Finally packed and ready to embark on their so-called 'fishing' trip, the partners topped off the gas tank, stocked up on chips, water, and assorted other junk food, then hit the freeway.

"Hey, Hobbesy. Pull the CD case out of my bag. I brought some tunes to make the ride more fun," Darien suggested as he headed east across town on Highway 8.

A huge grin split Bobby's face. "No offense there, partner, but you're not exactly 'my type' when it comes to givin' me a pleasurable ride." He waggled his eyebrows as he reached into the back seat and pulled out a thick CD case from his own bag. "Great minds think alike," he said, unzipping it, and popped a disc into the player.

Darien guffawed at the joke, then he eyed the stereo system warily. "Hobbes?"

"What?" the elder agent replied absently as he adjusted the volume, bass and treble levels.

"What're you playing?"

Bobby shot him a strange look out of the corner of his eye, but didn't answer right away.

Darien opened his mouth to ask again what his crazy partner was up to, but was interrupted by the melodic voice of Patrick Stewart.

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense."

"Um, Hobbes?"

A hint of irritation seeped into Bobby's voice. "What, Fawkes?"

"Is this what I think it is?"

"What do you think it is?"

Darien ground his teeth together in frustration. He despised being asked a question in response to a question. Hobbes had learned too many shrinks' tricks, in his humble opinion. He listened to the CD for a little bit before he ventured an answer. "Sounds like Harry Potter. But you wouldn't be reading kid's books, now, would ya?"

Hobbes shrugged. "Why not? Some'a them are pretty cool. Like those Lemon Spigot stories..."

"You mean Lemony Snickett?" Darien rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, that."

Darien snickered softly. "Yeah, I guess that sounds about right for a guy who watches Sesame Street at six a.m. just because Bert and Ernie wig out his gay-dar."

"Hey! It's a good show! And they really oughta come outta the closet, you know? I'm just statin' the obvious here!"

"And once again, may I point out that they're. Frickin'. Puppets. Hobbes."

Bobby shrugged, ducking his head down defensively. "Still, Fawkes. All's I'm sayin' is, they have every other diversity base covered. Why not that one?"

Darien merely shook his head again, and the two drove in companionable silence for a few minutes, listening to the book on CD... at least until Bobby noticed which way they were going. "Aw, crap Fawkes, please don't tell me we're takin' the 15!"

"It's faster than the I-5 this early. I was gonna take it up to Escondido, then cut back over to the coast. I thought we could take highway 1. Best scenery there is for the drive."

Bobby shook his head in dismay. "Do I look like a freakin' tourist here?" he returned sharply. "We should be goin' I-5, Fawkes. The Pacific highway is a frickin' slow boat to China comparatively. I wanna get to San Fran before the end of our so-called 'vacation'!'"

"Hobbes, we're supposed to be looking like we're off duty!" Darien argued back. "You're the Mister Paranoid who's always saying we need to keep up appearances, 'cause we never know who could be watching!"

Bobby huffed. "I know, and for once, you have a point. But I'm just not in the mood to be stuck driving for frickin' ever today. It's too hot, too smoggy, and I wanna get there so we can find out what hinky stuff our guys are up to. And besides, we've gotta keep this baby fueled up. Not much in the way of service stations on the One." He patted the dashboard affectionately, the Hummer already having been anthropomorphized, apparently. "Or fast food places, either," he added with a smirk at Darien.

"I thought that's why we loaded up on munchies?" he shot back. "And the weather would be cooler out by the coast," he wheedled, still not quite ready to give up on the more scenic drive. "Besides. Ever hear of air conditioning?" Darien pointed out. "Hello, this beauty has it!" But when Bobby looked like he wasn't going to budge in his opinion, he offered, "OK, how about this: we take the 405 shortcut through LA?"

Bobby shook his head. "That whole route is one huge frickin' parking lot no matter what time of day it is. How about this: you do the drivin', and leave the navigating to me? When you give up the wheel, you'll have your shot at saying which way we take. Deal?"

Darien shook his head bemusedly. "Why do I even bother with you?" he snarked good-naturedly. "OK, you get the second half of the trip, but just so I can catch a quick nap."

"Doctor's orders, huh?" Hobbes grinned. "You remember to leave your cell phone on? In case Claire wants to check up on you?"

Darien eyed his partner with a scowl. "What about you, Hobbes? Your cell on? Huh? So you can call the Keepy and ask her out to a Duran Duran concert, next?"

"It wasn't a date, Fawkes!" Bobby protested with futile vehemence.

Darien snorted disbelievingly. "Uh-huh," he grunted sarcastically. "So... how was it? Did you do any slow dancing with the Keep?" the prurient question was accompanied by a lewd eyebrow waggle.

They sparred verbally over whether or not Hobbes' and the Keeper's attendance together at a Rod Stewart concert could be classified as a date for most of the next hour. Reaching the LA basin just before lunch, they made their way over to the I-5, and settled in to see what sort of traveling their new steed could do.

Traffic on the main north-south artery along the state of California moved at speeds not permitted on most other highways, and Darien reveled in opening up the Hummer to see how fast it could go. Hobbes ruined the experiment by insisting he drop it down to something near legal, though, when Darien reached a speed of nearly 95 mph,

They fueled up again just north of the Grapevine, a notorious pass through the San Bernardino Mountains that was frequently closed during the winter due to snow. Darien took the opportunity to replenish his food supply, preferring pretty much anything over the green algae shakes Claire had whipped up for him to keep his blood sugar levels stable when he didn't have time to eat or access to food. He walked over to the fast food place next door to the service station while Hobbes patiently waited for the Hummer's enormous tank to fill and bought himself three bacon cheeseburgers, a vanilla milkshake and a salad. He even sprang for a chicken sandwich for Hobbes, who gave him a bad time about the two large greasy bags he returned with just as Bobby settled the bill, wincing at the cost of refilling the vehicle's tank.

"Well, it's not like this was cheap, either," Darien complained, climbing into the passenger side of the Hummer with his booty.

"Yeah, but you're eatin' it all!" Hobbes retorted.

Darien handed Hobbes the chicken sandwich silently.

Hobbes took it and made an apologetic face. "OK, just most of it," he amended his protest. "How come you aren't drinking one'a your green shakes?" he asked as he unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite.

Darien laughed uproariously around his own mouthful. "Drink pond scum when I can have real food? Uh-uh," he shook his head. "That stuff is for emergencies. And that's all. If there's real food, I'm eating that, partner."

"But they help, right?" Hobbes asked, taking another bite as he started the big engine and headed out of the driveway and back to the on-ramp.

"So does a cheeseburger. And the burger tastes better," Darien answered. "If it makes you any happier, I did buy a salad," he confessed, pulling it out of the bag. "Now you can tell the Keeper that I'm eating right when she grills you," he grinned, setting it aside and unwrapping his second burger.

Hobbes shook his head. "I'd kill for your metabolism," he lamented, watching Fawkes wolf down the second sandwich as quickly as he had the first.

"Just be glad you don't get the shakes that go with it when I don't get to the chow in time," Darien reminded, licking ketchup off his fingers.

They drove on companionably, eating and listening to the rest of the first Harry Potter book CD.

By the time they'd gotten 100 miles past Bakersfield, though, the melodious tones of Patrick Stewart's voice were beginning to put Darien to sleep. After the 15^th yawn in as many minutes, Hobbes told him to get the briefing files out of his bag and review them.

"No sense showing up for the game if we don't know who the players are," Hobbes pointed out.

"We went over all this when we went after Kelley," Darien whined. He'd really rather have taken a nap.

"Yeah, but Eberts handed off the latest info when he and the 'Fish told us to take this little road trip," Hobbes reminded him. "And from what I saw before we got the green light to get the heck out of town for a while, it looks like Javier has himself a new right-hand chick. Alice-something," he finished.

With a resigned sigh, Darien opened the folder with the Agency's stamp on it and eyed the photos clipped to the inside. "That's a chick? She looks like she's in training for the Ukrainian Olympic team," he quipped uncharitably. "And it's Alvarez, Hobbes. Not Alice-something."

The pictures of the woman in question were taken with a telephoto lens, and from a considerable distance, judging by the grainy quality of the shots.

"So what's her story? What happened to Dante?" Hobbes wanted to know.

"According to this, nothing. He's still around, from what the FBI's surveillance says. It's just that this Jolene Alvarez chick seems to have been showing up lately when Javier's guys are up to no good. I don't know if she's a new player, or just one we missed the last time we went up against them. But here she is, under 'known associates.'" Darien flipped through the file, reading aloud from it, recounting the most recent activities of Javier's terrorist gang. The group had certainly been getting around, if this was even halfway accurate, but the most interesting thing to Darien was the fact that Hobbes' informal information network had come up with a good bit more in the way of concrete data than the Feds seemed to have done. "I'm thinkin' you need to check in with Hobbesnet. See what they've got on this chick," he said when he'd finished reading off the scant four paragraphs that seemed to be known about the newest of Javier's terrorist associates.

"Fawkes, I keep tellin' ya, Hobbesnet isn't a supermarket. You don't just walk in and pick what you want off the shelves like a box of cereal," Hobbes lamented his younger partner's blasé confidence.

Darien shrugged. "I dunno, it just seems to me like if we want to find out what's really going on, relying on the intel provided by Jonesy and his friends seems like a bad way to start." He glanced at Hobbes, who was clearly considering this.

"Tell ya what; next gas stop, I'll see if there's any word on her that didn't make it into that there file, partner. That work for you?" Bobby conceded.

Darien nodded with a grin. "Works for me," he agreed with another yawn.

"Oh, just drop your seat back and take a nap. I'll listen to the next Harry Potter CD," Bobby shook his head with fond exasperation. "Guess all the blood's gone to your stomach to digest that lunch you had."

When Darien awoke, the scenery didn't look much different from what it had when he'd gone to sleep two hours before: low, dun-colored rolling hills to the west, and mile after mile of orchards to the east. It had been tomatoes or something when he'd gone to sleep, but other than that, it was more of the same. California's Central Valley was reputedly the produce capital of the country. After six hours of nothing but fields and crops, Darien could see why it had that reputation.

Hobbes must have finished his book on tape, because a CD was playing. It took him a minute to realize it was some old AC/DC album, and he grimaced. The warmth of the sun beating in on him and the longer than expected nap had left him with a headache. He ejected the CD in the middle of a masterful, if loud, guitar riff, and started hunting for an interesting radio station over Hobbes' protests.

Darien paused in his button pushing when he recognized the voices of the hosts of a call in show. Although the program frequently featured questions about sex from the mostly teenaged to X generation audience, there was also raunchy banter and a funny bit called 'Germany or Florida.'

"Highway to Hell is one of their greatest hits!" Hobbes said irritably. "What are you listening to now?"

"These guys are really funny." Darien rooted around under his feet for the last of the cans of root beer, bopping to the mock-jazz theme song which mostly consisted of Adam singing "Germany or Florida" in a falsetto with his co-host Drew, laughing in the background

"Let me explain the game in case there's any one on Earth who hasn't heard of it," Adam, announced. Darien grinned, sitting back to listen. "We guess whether a strange or unusual occurrence happened in either Germany or Florida, right, Drew? Because apparently all weird things happen in those two places--I just can't figure out whether Germany is the Florida of Europe or Florida is the Germany of the US."

"I was stationed briefly in Germany," Hobbes mentioned. "Good beer there."

"Okay, so Jeffrey?" Adam called out to the next caller. "You're 17?"

"Yep. I've got a Germany or Florida for you."

"Go for it." Drew encouraged.

"A zoo is trying to mate its penguins, but having no luck at all. Finally, they study the pairs and realize that four of the penguins of mating age are paired male to male. So they import four more girl penguins, hoping to encourage the four boys."

"Good times!" Adam interrupted making a rude sound.

"When the local chapter of Gays and Lesbians hears about this, they picket the zoo, protesting that it's discrimination against gays. The manager of the zoo has to make a public apology, saying they were just widening the breeding population of the zoo, not trying to break up any homosexual couples. Germany or Florida?"

"Germany!" Darien guessed.

"I say Germany," Adam mused. "Because of the apology angle. If it weren't for that... I'd say there probably are gay penguins in Florida."

"C'mon, Hobbesy, what's your guess?" Darien nudged his partner's driving arm, talking over Drew agreeing with Adam. There was some silly banter about penguins wearing tuxes for the occasion.

"Fawkes, this is stupid. What do I care about the mating habits of penguins?"

"We do work for the Department of Fish and Game. Don't you think we would have heard about subversive penguins?"

"Aw, you guys guessed," Jeffrey sounded disappointed. "You're right, it's Germany. Dr. Drew, can I ask a question about my girlfriend? She wants to have sex and I think it's too soon."

"Good times!" Adam proclaimed. "Right after the break, Jeffrey. Drew and I have to go talk about penguin love in the john for three minutes."

"You could call in about your girlfriend," Darien suggested, turning down the volume on a sonorous-voiced man advertising his vast selection of diamonds at Diamondworld.

"I don't have a girlfriend."

"You took Claire to the Rod Stewart concert--and bought her a Chai latte venti just last week. If that's not love, I don't know what is."

"She likes Chai lattes."

"But the venti?" Darien teased.

"The gas gauge is on empty again, there's a gas station in 6.5 miles." Hobbes ignored the taunts as he hit the 'nearest service' option on the GPS navigational display.

"Mmm, gas, and diesel food. Sounds tasty." Darien said, deliberately misreading the display.

"Diesel and food, glandbrain," Hobbes snorted. "And there's a Starbucks." He pointed to the familiar logo on a billboard announcing it as the only such emporium in 35 miles. "You have to pay for your own venti, though."

Hobbes shook his head impatiently at the sight of the evening rush hour traffic heading westbound onto the upper deck of the Bay Bridge. "God, what a mess," he complained as he heard the Fastrak transponder on the dash beep, signaling that their toll had been paid.

"There's something wrong with a piece of real estate that size that has a cover charge to get in, my friend, that's all I can say." His comment was met with silence, and he glanced at Fawkes, whose attention was on the occupant of a BMW convertible crawling along beside them towards the metering lights. Hobbes stretched upward in his seat a bit to catch a glimpse of the magnificent California blonde driving it. She was at most 25, golden skinned and golden haired, and doing her best to ignore Fawkes' wolf whistle out the passenger window.

"Cut that out," Bobby scolded and over-rode the window controls on Darien's side, the glass sliding upwards noiselessly and cutting Darien off from the outside world. "You're gonna scare the locals," he added, grinning at the affronted Fawkes.

The setting sun was shining directly in through their windshield, making it nearly impossible to see a thing, and Darien flipped down the sun visor as he glared at Hobbes. "You know, you're the one who keeps telling me I should go out more," he pointed out grumpily.

Hobbes snorted, signaling his merge into the next lane over, traffic finally opening up a bit now that they were on the span itself. "What, you were gonna jump out of a moving vehicle to ask her out? Gimme a break, pal. Besides, we've got us some fishing to do. You can work on your pick up lines on your own time, OK?" Hobbes suggested as he picked up speed.

Passing through the Treasure Island tunnel, they hit the western suspension span, the tall gray towers gilded by the lowering sun. San Francisco lay directly ahead, looking like a paper cutout, the buildings in silhouette against the sunset. "Damned pretty town," Hobbes opined, ignoring his partner's truculent silence. "Wanna use the GPS to find out which exit we're supposed to take?" he suggested.

The tactic worked wonders, an opportunity to play with the Hummer's considerable options better than a lollipop at the dentist's office as far as cheering up Fawkes went.

Hobbes concentrated on avoiding the maniac drivers who wove in and out of lanes in a vain effort to better their positions, but traffic was heavy enough that it only served to piss off everyone else. "Morons," he muttered as one large black SUV practically rear-ended a Cooper Mini.

"You talking to me?" Fawkes huffed, clearly struggling with the data input panel on the Hummer's dash. "Friggin' thing is broken, Hobbes. I can't get it to accept the address of the hotel. It keeps trying to give me the directions to someplace called The Power Exchange." Disgusted, Fawkes turned off the GPS locator and sank back into his leather seat.

Hobbes reached forward and fished an old-fashioned paper map out of the glove compartment and handed it over to Fawkes. "When all else fails, there's always a map," he said with a grin.

Darien wrestled with the map. "Where is it we're going again?" he asked, refolding it so the downtown portion of the city was visible.

"Red Lion. Rumor has it, Alvarez was spotted there last week," Hobbes answered, dodging a Mercedes driven by someone who apparently had their cell phone surgically attached to their ear. "It's on McAllister," he added.

"Hmm. Looks like we need to take the Civic Center exit, then," Darien informed him.

Hobbes took the specified exit and they found themselves on the surface streets. "OK, now where?" he asked.

Darien traced a route on the map spread across his knees, then looked up, craning to see street signs in the growing dusk. To the left, a globed sun sank towards the sea like a huge orange coal, painting half the buildings with temporary fire. "We want McAllister Street, right? That should be another, oh, two blocks."

"You sure?" Hobbes peered around the darkening street. A pedestrian started to cross ahead of him, and he sighed and put on the brakes.

"Hobbes. I can read a map."

"So you say." Hobbes pressed a button, and his window sank silently away. A damp breeze poured into the Hummer. Darien breathed deeply, trying to figure out what the scent reminded him of. "Here we go, McAllister Street."

Darien pointed. "Yeah, but we have to go left, Bobby."

"Now you tell me." Hobbes checked traffic, which was slow, then pulled across two lanes, a maneuver that brought irate honking from a little blue Beetle behind them.

"Check that out, they agree with me." Darien smirked.

Hobbes flipped off both the driver and his partner without missing a beat.

About a third of the way down the block, Darien checked the slip of paper he'd tucked into the map booklet. "Red Lion, that's it, right there." The hotel looked as if it had stood here awhile, dingy and battered, squatting immovably in its post on the edge of an incredibly seedy part of town.

Hobbes eased the Hummer into the first parking spot big enough to accommodate it. Darien jumped out before the engine turned off, stretching his entire length towards the darkening sky. He ruffled his hair, as if the wind wasn't doing it for him. "Whoo! Glad we got the Hummer now, Hobbes?" He looked his partner up and down and smirked. "Oh right, you're short enough that it wouldn't matter to you if we'd driven up here in a Miata. Lucky you."

"Ha, ha." Hobbes locked the vehicle, then tucked the keys into his pocket and patted it reassuringly. "Let's check this place out."

Darien fell into swinging step beside him. "See if your intel is accurate."

"The intel is fine," Hobbes insisted. "You, my friend, aren't looking so hot." He raised a concerned eyebrow.

"Are you kidding me?" Darien snorted, then executed a quick dance move, grinning. "That look a little hotter? Come on. Other than being in a car for more than eight hours, I'm peachy keen."

"If you say so, partner. Just lookin' out for you, alright?"

The lobby was an oppressive little room, the gray and yellow decor giving the impression of a paperback book ready to fall apart. Only a few people disturbed its quiet: one old guy reading a newspaper and a man in jeans and a T-shirt loitering near the doors in a way that screamed "crook" to Darien. The receptionist behind the desk stood out, mostly because she happened to be a very attractive brunette. "What can I do for you, sirs?" Her smile was real, with dimples, and Hobbes returned it with interest, turning on every megawatt of charm he possessed.

"How are you, this fine evening?" Hobbes reached out to take her hand, and flustered, she let him.

"Fine. Well, good, actually." The woman's gaze slid to Darien, who propped himself up against the counter and grinned causally at her.

"Hey."

Hobbes leaned in closer, blocking the clerk's view of his partner. "Can I ask you something, Lea?" he said smoothly, reading her name from her clerk's tag. "We're looking for a woman named Jolene Alvarez. Heard she stayed here recently. Do you know if that's true?"

Lea sighed. "OK, you know that legally I can't tell you that, right?"

Darien already had his badge out of his pocket, and slid it across the counter before his partner could have a chance to play James Bond. "We're federal agents," he told her, keeping his voice down. "Darien Fawkes and Bobby Hobbes."

"We're just curious if Alvarez was here," Hobbes said, handing her his badge as well. "We have reason to believe she's got ties to a criminal organization."

Lea handed back their badges. "You're not the first to come looking," she said sourly. "She was nice enough, tidy, here for two days last week. That all?"

Hobbes tucked his badge back into his inner pocket. "Any idea where she might've been going from here?"

"The post office, I'm not. People don't exactly leave their forwarding addresses with me." Lea scowled. "Anything else I can do for you gentlemen?"

Darien, who had been scanning the lobby, turned back to the clerk. "This is a great place you've got here. Any chance you've got a double room open?"

"We might. Let me check." Lea relaxed a little, turning to check her monitor.

"Beat me to it, partner," Hobbes complained in an undertone. "Ask her for a look at the registration books, why don't you, Romeo?"

"Sure," the clerk said, "Room 47."

"We'll take it," Darien said, reaching for his wallet. They waited while Lea took his information, and then Darien leaned over the counter again. "I don't suppose I could ask you another favor, could I?"

"OK, remind me what you think we're going to get out of these?" Darien tossed the sheaf of copies across the bed he was sprawled out on and poked through them randomly, noting the names, room numbers, and dates.

Hobbes barely looked up from his own stack. "If this is a regular meeting place for Javier's men, this'll help us spot the pattern. Also, anyone who's still here might be able to tell us what Alvarez was up to, and where she might--"

"--have gone to next? Good luck." Darien rolled off the bed and shrugged into his leather jacket. "I'm going to dinner. You coming?" He stopped at the mirror over the bureau to fluff his hair, which had started to droop a bit in the moist air. "We're not even sure she's still in the area, are we?"

"Nope, but she's the closest thing to a lead we've got, Fawkes." Hobbes studiously turned another page.

Darien searched the table for his room key. "'Va-ca-tion.' You do know the meaning of this word, right, Bobby? 'Cause I know it's been a while since you had any."

"The key word here is 'paid'," Hobbes retorted. "Know what that means? Money in exchange for work."

"Ah, what the Fat Man doesn't know won't hurt him." Darien stalked over, put a hand under Hobbes' elbow, and tried to leverage the smaller man out of his chair. "These ledgers will still be here when we get back. And I am not drinking those algae shake things unless I need to, which means not while there's a perfectly decent Mexican place around the corner. You were trying to kill the pedestrian. You musta missed it," he snarked.

"And how d'you know the ledgers will be here when we get back, Nostradamus?" Hobbes started gathering his papers into a neat stack.

"Oh, come on. Nobody knows we're here, and nobody's going to break in just for those, I guarantee you." Darien opened the door, waiting while his partner secured the papers and straightened his jacket. "Now can we go?"

Hobbes was twitchy on their way out. Every person they passed got stared at; not obviously, Darien had to give him that, but in a way that made at least one pretty blonde sidestep them. "How likely is it that anyone else here is Javier's?"

"Can't rule it out," Hobbes said, gaze darting around the lobby. "And in this part of town, anyone might be a criminal."

"Hey, I'm not the one you have to tell that to." Darien forged ahead, pushing the doors open to chilly darkness.

The hotel itself had seemed quiet, but the parking lot was deserted. One of the lamps had burned out, dumping a patch of shadow across the entrance to the street.

Hobbes turned a full 360 degrees, sniffed the air, and seemed to settle a bit. "Where'd you say that restaurant was?"

Darien kicked a foot towards the left side of the parking lot, where the top edge of a dying florescent sign peered over the trees. "Just past that building and around the corner. C'mon." He stepped out across the pavement, enjoying the stretch in his weary legs, and enjoying even more his partner's scurry to catch up.

They passed the row of trees that bordered the hotel parking, and turned the corner, crossing into a bare, unlit, paved area between the trees and the restaurant. That's when Darien heard footsteps on the concrete. More than there should have been. Oh, crap.

He turned to check behind them, barely in time to deflect a punch headed straight for his head. Defensive training kicked in, and he managed to land a couple of good blows to his dark-suited attacker before someone grabbed his arm on the backswing and twisted it up behind him.

The first guy took the opportunity to land a fist squarely in Darien's diaphragm. He doubled over, breath gone in a rush, and felt the ice-cold circle of handcuffs pinch their way around first one wrist, then the other. Somewhere, he could hear Hobbes still going at it.

A fist knotted itself into his collar, forcing his head up. The guy's other hand dangled a badge in front of his face. Darien blinked, and in the minimal light made out the blocky letters FBI.

"Federal agent," the guy said. "Darien Fawkes, you're under arrest for aiding and abetting a terrorist."

There are some moments when "crap" says it all. Then there are the moments when describing some particular situation as an enormous pile of dung doesn't quite cut it. This was one of those.

So at first, I didn't say anything at all.

Hobbes, however, had no such difficulty.

Darien blinked. There was just enough light leaking over from the parking lot to show him that his assailant was tall, and black. Darien didn't feel like turning his head to check out whoever had cuffed his hands. FBI? Darien wanted to shout a protest, that they'd somehow gotten their little Fed wires crossed, but he was still busy breathing.

Of course, maybe he wouldn't need to protest. Hobbes seemed to be covering that department as he traded blows with two other guys. Agents. "What d'you think you're doing?"An "ooof" from someone else told Darien an elbow had found its mark. "You just made the biggest mistake of your lives!"

Darien's black guy spun around, badge still lifted. "FBI! Stand down, agent."

For one moment, Hobbes froze, and that was all it took. Three seconds later, one of their attackers had his arms, and the other had a gun pointed right in Hobbes' face. Holding very still, Hobbes glanced from the badge to the tall agent, then to Darien, who shrugged minutely so as not to dislocate his own shoulder. "Robert Hobbes, also a federal agent," Hobbes bit out the words. "Whoever the hell you are, buster, you're gonna regret this. Badge is in my jacket--you wanna let me get it?"

"Agent Murchinson." The black agent tucked his badge back in his own jacket, then gestured to the shrimpy (in comparison) agent holding the gun on Hobbes. "Nah. Agent Tremont, you get it."

Keeping the gun on Hobbes, the smaller man reached forward and rifled Hobbes' pockets. He tossed the badge to Murchinson and resumed his stance. "Here, sir."

Murchinson checked it. "This looks in order, but you'll have to come with us anyway, Agent Hobbes."

Darien sucked in another breath and straightened up slowly. "OK, someone want to tell me what exactly I'm charged with?"

"That's my partner, there," Hobbes chimed in. "I always knew you Fibbies were schmucks, but this just takes the cake."

Murchinson sized up Darien with a slowly, methodical gaze.

"The badge is in my left back pocket," Darien hinted. Instantly, a hand slid out the light weight of his ID with ease.

"Fish & Game?" The voice behind him was a woman's, low and southern. "That the best your forger could come up with?"

"It's not a forgery--" As Darien's voice started to rise, the tension on his wrists increased. "I'm a federal agent."

"Maybe. You're also tagged as a security risk in our database." Murchinson crowded into Darien's personal space and spoke the words right into his face. "An associate of Javier, an international terrorist, traveling to the same destination and staying in the same hotel that other members of his organization have recently been spotted in."

"OK." Darien coughed. "You might want to suggest that your database get some updates, because that's definitely not current."

Hobbes addressed himself directly to Murchinson. "You guys using that new tracking system Homeland Security's been talking up?"

"It's been useful so far," the female agent boasted. "Every time anyone suspicious uses something that's magnetically coded, it's logged, so we can track the movements of known groups and individuals."

"Credit cards," Darien muttered, glaring at his partner, who shrugged. They'd been betrayed by a few pieces of plastic and some fancy electronics.

"That and the bridge transponder both put us in this town," Hobbes mused darkly, sparing a glare at Murchinson and the female agent.

She sounded like she was smiling, now. "Yep."

"Listen to me." Darien cleared his throat. "I am not, nor have I ever been, an associate of Javier. He's creepy and likes to blow people up."

Murchinson rubbed a hand across his cropped hair. "You did go to prison with one of his right-hand men, a couple of years back."

Darien forced a laugh. "Have you guys heard of undercover work? I had background with B&E's; my agency put me in to sabotage Javier's next job. It worked. We saved the day." Now he did strain his neck turning to get a glimpse of the woman who'd handcuffed him. "You can look it up if you want, but meanwhile, would you mind taking these things off? They pinch."

"Can't do that." Murchinson gathered up a fistful of Darien's jacket, and steered him further into the empty lot, towards a dark sedan, nearly invisible in the dusk. "At the least, we have to take you in while we check out your stories."

Darien felt the agent behind him shift her grip. He had just started thinking about kicking her down and running, when another dark car pulled into the lot. The driver rolled down his window and hailed the other agents. "Looks like you caught something. Who?"

"Aw, crap," Hobbes said, before Darien could get the word out.

The voice was familiar and very unwelcome.

"Agent Jones." The respect in Murchinson's voice caused Darien to snort involuntarily. "One of Javier's past associates, come to join the party."

"Really?" Jones climbed out of his car and strolled over to inspect his colleagues' catch, ambient light catching his blond flop of hair and cheap gray suit. Both eyebrows shot upward as he looked from Darien to Hobbes, and he started a slow, incredulous grin. "Darien Fawkes." Jones started circling them, and his grin widened. "And Lithium Bob. Hobbes, I knew you were trying to get in touch with me. You didn't have to drag your partner all the way up here for that."

Hobbes' voice had a dangerous edge. "Jones, this has gone far enough."

"I'm not sure it has, yet." The agent's smug grin was really grating on Darien's nerves.

"Come on," Darien said, reasonably, he thought. "Call off the zealots, here. We're federal agents and you know it."

Jones stepped right up into Darien's face. He smelled like mouthwash. "Why shouldn't I believe my own men?" he asked mildly. "I have no idea why you're here."

"We're on vacation." Hobbes practically spat the words, and the agent holding him had to pull him back sharply to keep him from lunging at Jones.

"Ooh, temper. You want those cuffs off or not?" Jones raised an eyebrow. "Vacation. Huh. And here I thought it might have something to do with the fact that I was invited to help out on a project up here, and you weren't."

"Call our boss, if you have to." Darien shrugged. "I'm sure he'll vouch for us."

Jones stood for a moment, thinking this over. Finally, he shook his head. "Oh, fine. Murchinson, I know these guys, and yeah, they're agents. After a fashion. It's still Fish & Game, right?" He smirked as he inspected their badges.

The cuffs came off roughly, and Darien took the time to straighten his jacket and comb his fingers through his hair before rubbing aggrievedly at his abused wrists.

"A little out of your jurisdiction, boys," Jones observed.

"Vacation," Hobbes insisted. "Last I checked, this was still a free country."

Jones was dialing a number on his cell phone, and ignoring them roundly. "Mr. Borden, please? Agent Jones, FBI."

Darien shrugged his shoulders, trying to relax. A few more bruises for the new collection, not to mention the adrenaline spike, which was fading a little too fast for his liking. At least he hadn't Quicksilvered when they jumped him. Kevin had worked pretty hard with him on that reflex when he'd first had the gland implanted.

Hobbes caught his gaze, tilted his head towards Jones, and rolled his eyes. Yeah. That about covered it.

"Mr. Borden, sir, sorry to disturb you." Jones had his bland professional face on. "Two of your men were caught interfering in an ongoing investigation--what? Agents Fawkes and Hobbes...." He listened, and Darien noted with glee that the facade was slipping. "Vacation. You're sure you don't know where they were planning to go? No, sir, of course I wasn't suggesting...no. You've been very helpful. Thank--" The other end of the line hung up with a click audible even on this end of the line.

It was Darien's turn to grin. "Told you," he said to Jones. "We're on vacation, pure and simple. I hear the fishing's good."

Jones grimaced, as if he'd bitten something sour. "And you just happen to be staying at the same hotel where Jolene Alvarez was spotted?"

"Coincidence?" Hobbes looked like the cat who'd eaten a whole cage full of canaries.

"Or the one slip in a nice cover story." Jones crossed his arms.

Hobbes pushed right up into Jonesy's face. The pasty agent didn't back down. "We've saved your ass more times than we ever should've. We're the ones who stopped Javier when he showed up wantin' to play god in San Diego." He emphasized each point with a poke from his index finger. "You Fibbies had no clue. We figured him out, tracked him down."

Darien rocked back on his heels, enjoying the show. Short of trumping up some excuse to arrest them himself, Jones couldn't make them leave. It was like teasing a dog: you know you shouldn't, but it's too much fun to pass up.

"At least I follow orders," Jones countered.

That was weak. Darien deducted a point from Jonesy's side of his mental scoreboard.

"That explains why you're such a terminal screwup!" Hobbes spat.

Darien took a fresh look at his partner, quivering like a bantam rooster ready to fight, jacket mussed, and just having publicly made a case in favor of disobeying orders. That was worth at least five points.

"You need us on this," Hobbes said. "The kid here knows how Javier works, we've seen him in action up close."

"Unlike you," Darien added pleasantly, not wanting to be left out. He turned to Hobbes. "Remember when this guy couldn't figure out that his own boss was the sniper trying to kill the kid they had under protective custody?"

Hobbes stayed grim-faced. "Or not bothering to track down the real culprits in a case. Tch. Not smart, this one."

Jones was speechless. In fact, what Darien could see of his face seemed to be turning an interesting shade of purple.

"You know," Darien's stage-whisper carried through the lot, "I'm kinda surprised he even knows that Javier's targeted this project."

Hobbes shrugged. "They miss Alvarez, but nab us. How's that for good investigative work? And he asks why we're here...."

Jones finally broke. "I was temporarily reassigned here, unlike you two loose cannons. Get back to your playground in San Diego, and leave this to an agency that has actual resources."

"No. Way." Hobbes stared unblinkingly at the other agent.

"Hey, you guys."

At the interruption, both combatants stared at Darien.

"I bet I know how we can settle this. I like a good competition, and Hobbes, I know you like to play the odds. What about you, Jonesy?" Before the agent could even respond, Darien rubbed his hands gleefully together. "Great. Let's see who can track down Javier first. Hobbes and I versus you and your...resourceful agency."

"That's ridiculous." Jones turned to head back to his car.

"Aw, he knows he'll lose, that's all." Hobbes put more contempt into that sentence that Darien had thought him capable of.

Jones stopped walking.

Hobbes continued, "He's already lost. And I was gonna wager a whole month's pay, too."

"I can chip in," Darien said quickly. "Last chance," he called. "We're not going anywhere, but at least you could get into the vacation spirit, Jones."

"Twenty-five hundred dollars says he can't hack it." Hobbes made sure his voice was pitched just loud enough to reach every other agent.

Jones turned and stalked back to them. "Fine. You're on. I'm looking forward to trouncing your ass. Asses." He hopped into his car and squealed out into the street. Two other agency cars followed him, leaving one sitting lonely in the darkness at the back of the lot.

"'Trouncing?'" Darien asked. "Wonder what he's been reading." He and Hobbes watched the cars pull away.

Hobbes finally brushed off his jacket and slacks, then smoothed down what remained of his hair. "Still want that burrito, partner?"

The next morning dawned obnoxiously, at least for Darien Fawkes. At some ungodly early hour, Hobbes started shaking him. "Fawkes. Rise an' shine."

Darien squinted against the pale, misty light that drifted in through the uncovered hotel window, and pulled his pillow over his head. Ah, blessed darkness.

"Fawkes." Hobbes sounded exasperated. "I could haul you right outta that bed."

"We are on vacation," Darien protested from beneath the pillow. "I am, anyway. Lemme sleep."

Hobbes leaned over, putting his face as close to Darien's as he could get. "No. We're on the trail of an unpredictable international terrorist. A threat to our national security." When Darien simply lay there, inert, Hobbes added, "I'd wager anything you like that Jones is already out lookin'."

"Ah, he's not that smart." Reluctantly, however, Darien surfaced, yawning hugely and stretching like a long, bony cat.

He lowered his hands--and they met a cup of coffee, steaming warmly into his face. Darien blinked at it, then at Hobbes, who was headed for the window. In passing, the balding agent waved a hand towards the TV table. It was stacked with fruit and pastries, undoubtedly from the hotel's advertised Continental breakfast.

Darien grinned and addressed his partner's jacketed back. "Ha. If this is the kind of service a hospital stay gets me, I should look into doing that more often."

Hobbes snorted, and continued his vigilance over the parking lot.

Darien dragged himself out of bed, and picked up a muffin on his way to the bathroom. "What are you looking for?" he asked, over his shoulder. Half the muffin's top came off in one piece, which he stuffed into his mouth. Mmm. Banana nut. "Don't tell me you found someone in those hotel files."

"Nah." Hobbes stayed put.

"What then? Seeing if Jones is keeping tabs on us?" Darien prodded the muffin, silently cheering himself when the rest of the top came off in one piece, ready for munching.

"Sure." Hobbes sounded amused.

Darien poked his head back out into the living area. "I do have time for a shower, right?"

Hobbes feigned shock. "You'd better. I'm not driving around the city with...that...." He waved a fastidious hand under his nose. "Just make it quick."

He did try, but by the time he finished tweaking his hair into its proper form, Hobbes was pacing restlessly around and around the hotel room. "C'mon, Fawkes, we gotta get movin'." He tossed Darien's jacket at him, and headed for the door.

Darien, slightly more awake after a cup of coffee, sugared pastry, and a dousing in warm water, glanced out the windows and registered the reason for the washed-out light. "Uh, Hobbes, we're doing some firsthand information gathering, right?"

"Yeah, we've gotta know what we're dealing with."

"So...you do realize I can't go around Quicksilvered in this stuff." Darien waved a hand at the thick white fog that lapped up against the windows.

"Why not?" Hobbes already had the door open.

"It's like security lasers, if you spray 'em you can see them. Same idea. You'll have to drop me close to the buildings, so I can duck right inside instead of standing around in this." After a moment's thought, Darien emptied the basket of coffee things, and piled pastries into it instead. "Hey, I'm bringing the food, OK?"

Darien snagged another donut and munched it thoughtfully. "We're sure this is one of the locations the Feds are using for the test?" The view from the top of Twin Peaks towards the back side of the downtown financial district was spectacular. Darien paused to admire it, then lost track of the view as they turned into a well-marked road bristling with chain link fences and 'No Trespassing' signs.

"I know a guy who knows a gal in the broadcasting biz up here," Hobbes explained. "Besides, look at it. Eight hundred plus feet of broadcasting power. Taller than the rest of the city."

Craning out the passenger's side window, Darien looked up as they passed Sutro Tower. It wasn't really much of a building, just a solid base and then four equidistant pylons that tapered inward to a point about three quarters of the way up, then diverged again, surmounted by a catwalk and four 100 foot antennas rigged with a spider's web of bales. It was built from thousands of yards of red-and-white painted steel girders and cables shooting up into the sky before they disappeared into the lifting fog. A framework for the heart of San Francisco's EM broadcasting. "Cool. Wonder what it would be like to climb up there."

"Business before pleasure, Fawkes," Hobbes admonished him.

"Speaking of which--" Darien ducked back inside the Hummer and slouched down, immensely glad for the foot room in the vehicle. He hadn't been sure he could recognize any of the agents who had attacked them the night before, but that was definitely Murchinson heading down the sidewalk towards the base of the tower.

"I see him," Hobbes said. "You want to follow him in? I can pull over just up here, outta sight..."

"...out of mind," Darien finished, letting the Quicksilver cascade over his body. Everything suddenly got brighter as his vision shifted into a spectrum of grays. Hobbes glanced over at the apparently empty seat, but didn't twitch a muscle.

"Here we go, comin' up on it, you ready?" Hobbes kept the running patter low.

Darien didn't need the warning. He could see the stand of trees coming up on their left, and the Hummer was smoothly slowing. The moment it paused, he had the door open and leaped lightly out. Behind him, he heard Hobbes close the door.

The fog had definitely lifted somewhat, but if Darien held his hand still in front of him, enough moisture froze on it to start the outline of fingers. He picked up his pace, on the theory that if he moved quickly enough, the ice would break and fall as fast as it formed.

He couldn't tell if it was working, but Murchinson didn't spot him as they moved up the sidewalk towards the base of Sutro Tower. There was only one guard outside the metal door. Darien started scanning the rest of the area; no way would that be the limit of the security, not on a project like this.

Camera above the door, yep. And those looked like more cameras, set at intervals around the base of the tower. And lights that were probably set to motion detectors.

Murchinson reached the door, offering his badge casually to the guard. "Hey, Barris."

She smiled, but checked his badge thoroughly. "Murch. Go on through, I think you're expected." Barris unlocked the door without turning her back on the street.

Darien, who had spotted at least one more agent trying to make himself inconspicuous in the trees near the tower, almost missed his chance. He closed the gap between himself and Murchinson in three soundless strides and ducked under Barris' arm just in time to slip through before she pulled the door closed.

Inside the florescent-lit hallway, he crouched still, hearing the door lock behind him. Murchinson was moving down the hall, but he seemed to be the only one in the immediate area. Assured that he wasn't about to collide with unexpected persons, Darien followed the oblivious agent.

They passed several closed doors. The right-hand ones were all labeled with sheets of printed paper: Meyer Foundation Technologies, Authorized Personnel Only. Meyer...why did he know that name? Across the bottom of one sign someone had scrawled, very unprofessionally, "beware the zombie geeks." Darien grinned invisibly. At least one person here had a sense of humor.

Also, the last door on the right was open. Darien glanced after Murchinson, who had just entered a room at the far end of the hall and had not closed that door, either. Excellent. The less trace he was forced to leave here, the better.

There were only a couple of people hanging around in the Meyer Foundation room, which seemed to stretch the entire length of the hall. Both sat hunched over computer keyboards. But there was a hell of a lot of electronic equipment. None of it looked familiar to Darien, but he took a good look around just in case. Monitors, huge boxy things blinking with lights, and whiteboards covered with scientific-looking scribbles. The geeks were absorbed in their typing, so he eased into the room. A piece of paper printed up with what might be schematics caught his eye, and it was a moment's work to Quicksilver the item and tuck it into his pocket.

The young man nearest the door shivered suddenly. "Dr. Leon," he said to the gray-haired, mad-scientist type across the room. "Is it just me or did it just get cold in here?"

Without missing a keystroke, Dr. Leon drew in a deep breath and considered. "If Ana isn't back in two minutes, you can close the door."

Knowing his cue when he heard it, Darien made stealthy tracks back into the hallway. On his way to Murchinson's last known destination, he passed a tall, skinny woman who had both hands full of pastries and coffee. Mmmm. Darien could almost hear his partner's incredulity at the unsubtle rumble of his belly. You're not hungry again alreadyAnd as always, the answer was a resounding 'yes.'

He restrained himself from swiping the woman's snack as she paused, looking around for the source of the noise, instead continuing down the hall to the room Murchison had been heading for. Arriving, he peered through the open door. Oh, this could be interesting. The room was swarming with suited FBI agents--not that the room was big enough for them to swarm very effectively.

Darien leaned against the doorjamb and scanned the crowd. No sign of Jones, or anyone else he recognized from his brief stint with the San Diego office of the FBI. That was all to the good. Murchinson was in a far corner, talking animatedly to two female agents.

After a deep breath to ensure that his Quicksilver covering would remain solid, Darien started weaving through the crowd. The room was set up like a corporate office: desks, chairs and all. Big enough to serve as headquarters for a task force.

There was a certain perverse pleasure, Darien thought, in slinking through a room full of Feds. These people had once asked him to become a nothing, a strange and useful cog in their little machine, a piece of technology to be shown off; and they had no idea he was here.

"....finish those additional checks on the Meyer scientists, Hutchins?" The speaker was an untidy older man. Darien paused to listen; the name had been bugging him.

"Yes I did. Even alternate channels say they're clean." The voice belonged to the Southern woman who had handcuffed him the night before. Darien turned to get a look at her--dark hair, plain features except for the sharp eyes. "I think we're good there."

Darien had to dodge as they came towards him, and headed for an empty desk instead. He couldn't rifle through stacks of paper right in public, but a nudge here and there wouldn't be noticed. Pink, yellow, green copies.... Ah ha. This was what he'd come for.

Very carefully, Darien let Quicksilver dribble onto the stapled sheaf of paper, then added it to the others inside his jacket. Mission objective accomplished, he started back towards the door, crossing invisible fingers that no one would be blocking his path.

He was about five feet from the entrance when Jones strolled through it, headed right for him. Acting purely on instinct, Darien slid backwards, pressing himself up against the wall. If Jones didn't notice a sudden draft of cold air, he would presumably go right on by.

Instead, the agent beckoned three nearby agents to join him, practically in front of Darien's chosen hideaway. "OK, people, I need to know if there has been anything strange happening around here today."

That got him a few odd looks. "Such as?" Murchinson asked.

Jones took a breath to speak, hesitated, then blurted, "Any, uh, malfunctions in the cooling system? Items or papers disappearing, agents reporting being followed?"

That got a chorus of shaken heads, and more puzzled looks.

"OK." Jones relaxed enough to unbutton his jacket and started to move off. "Can I see the redone schedules? We've got it all covered now, right?"

Darien lurked in his place by the wall, waiting for someone else to head out. There - Hutchins, the Southern chick, was pulling on a raincoat. He wound his way after her, out of the room, down the hall past the line of closed doors, and out to the main entrance.

At the security panel, Hutchins keyed in a code and the door swung in. Darien had even less time to duck through than before, and he held his breath as he slid between the two women and emerged into a day suddenly brighter. No sunshine, but the mist had lifted further, enough that Darien walked jauntily in his Quicksilver suit down around the corner of the block before finding a convenient tree to shed the coating behind and stroll off to rendezvous with Hobbes.

Ten minutes later and a quarter mile away down the hill on Market Street, Darien sprawled in a plastic chair outside a coffee shop, chugging a bottle of Gatorade while Hobbes sipped his latte and pored over the papers Darien had lifted from the Feds.

"Nice catch." Hobbes flicked a page. "This is detailed. You have not lost your touch, my friend."

"Nope." Darien went back to his drink. "Right out from under Jonesy's nose, too. We've got him rattled, bro."

"Yeah?" That bit of information actually broke Hobbes' concentration.

"Yeah." Darien described the odd questions that were surely leading subordinates to question Jones' sanity.

Hobbes chuckled. "Guess the shoe's on the other foot now. Hope he likes keeping classified secrets." He went back to the schedule, and pointed to one item, then skipped down to another, and a third. "Looks like they're doin' three tests, not just the one. Over the next two days."

"And the first one's tonight, right?" Darien twitched the pages out of Hobbes' hands and flipped back to the first. "'Local network hardware test'. Javier's not going to bother with that, is he?"

"Who knows?" Hobbes muttered darkly. "The second test is scheduled for tomorrow, noonish, and the last one for 10:30 p.m. tomorrow night."

Darien skimmed the schedule again. "'Field interaction,' and then the big 'independent operation' test. Javier likes big bangs, big effects, so he'll go for the last one. Right?" He absently brought the Gatorade bottle to his mouth, but it was empty. Darien glared at it, then looked speculatively at the counter.

"Maybe. We've got precious little intel on what he's actually tryin' to do, other than generally screw up the process." Hobbes retrieved the schedule and huddled over it fiercely, as if he could intimidate it into revealing secrets.

"The mighty Bobby Hobbes, short on intel?" Darien grinned, and pulled the schematics out of his other pocket. All the notations were equations of some kind. "You know, we could call Eberts." In answer to Hobbes' startled frown, he added, "I'm not that great with techie stuff, and you're not that much better. He might have some ideas."

"We're on vacation," Hobbes reminded him.

Darien snorted. "Now he remembers."

"And that means we don't have access to Agency resources."

"Eberts is a friend!" Darien spread his hands innocently. "He's the one who recommended the fishing up here; you saying we can't call him up and ask for a few tips?"

"Not sayin' we can't. Just sayin' I've got some resources I still haven't used." Hobbes squinted at the schematics half-unfolded in front of Darien. "Meyer Foundation? Didn't your girlfriend Kate work for them?"

Darien slapped his own forehead. "Yeah, she did. Thanks, I couldn't remember where I knew that name from. Murchinson, the guy who was shoving his badge around last night, was checking into the Meyer techies. Given the serious security they've got going on at that site, I'd look inside too." He screwed the lid back on his bottle. "Guess they all checked out. Oh, and Kate wasn't my girlfriend."

"Whatever you say, Fawkes," Hobbes said indulgently, still reading the schedule. "You shoulda gone for her when you had a chance. Sweet lil' Kate liked you, Bobby Hobbes could see that."

"Hobbes...."

"You ever hear from her?" Hobbes flipped a page with elaborate casualness.

Darien sank a little lower into his chair. "Hobbes. She's in witness protection. And married. No, I don't hear from her."

Hobbes smirked. "You're blushing, partner. I still say you need to get out more."

"This is revenge, isn't it?" Darien crossed his arms defensively. "For that razzing about Claire on the trip up?"

An insane beeping interrupted Darien's question. Hobbes grabbed for the pager on his belt, and nodded, satisfied. "This," he said, holding up the pager, "is non-Eberts intel. If the threat's not from the inside, this guy might just be able to tell us where on the outside it's comin' from." He swept up the papers from the table and headed for the lot where the Hummer sat placidly across two spaces. "You comin'?"

The wind blew in gusts, making Fawkes' hair wave like seaweed in an ocean riptide, and Hobbes squinted into the westering sun at the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. Behind them, the hubbub of the Pier 39 shopping center competed in sheer volume with the raucous barking of the local sea lions that had taken over the neighboring marina for their private use as a rest stop on their migrations.

"Since we're here anyway, Hobbes, what say we hit the shops and see if we can find Claire a souvenir?" Darien suggested, interrupting Bobby's thoughts. "It'll be another hour before your 'contact' shows up," he wheedled, checking his watch.

Hobbes eyed his partner suspiciously. "You making another crack about my not-date with Claire?" he wanted to know. "I wish you'd just let it go, already. I told you. It was simple: we both like Rod Stewart, so we went to his show. As friends. Like you and me go to the water park, you know? Or the movies? I dunno why it's not getting through that thick skull of yours," he added as he cuffed the back of Darien's head very gently.

Fawkes grinned wickedly, not taking offense. "I knew it! It was a date. At least in your crazy little mind!" he exulted, smirking at Hobbes in a most annoying fashion. "C'mon," he said as he caught Bobby by the shoulder and hauled him up the wooden steps into the heart of the tourist trap. "We're gonna have to get her a present, now."

Forty minutes later, Hobbes finally managed to drag Fawkes out of the shopping center and back to the western side of the pier, where the sea lions greeted them -- and 400 other tourists -- with their clamor. While he scanned dock H for some sign of his snitch, Fawkes was examining his purchases.

In addition to a cast glass skull paperweight for Claire and an historical picture book for himself, Darien had acquired three t-shirts; one for himself, one for Alex, and one for Eberts. Alex's was emblazoned with the Dairy Queen logo -- redesigned to read 'Drama Queen'. It had made Fawkes howl with laughter, but Hobbes expected the super agent would be as likely to strangle Darien with it as wear it. Eberts', horizontally striped in black and white like an old-fashioned prison uniform, read 'Member: Alcatraz Swim Team,' and Darien's was screen printed with a colorful, if bawdy, commentary on what he'd 'seen' in the City By The Bay.

Fawkes pulled his newly purchased disposable Instamatic camera out of the plastic shopping bag and took a picture of the lively sea lions on the docks below the pier, then pushed Hobbes towards the railing so he could get a picture of him as well.

"Fawkes, would you cut it out?" Bobby complained. "You do not need no picture of me," he protested, trying to shrug his partner's firm grip off his upper arm. He stumbled across the uneven planking to the rail at Fawkes' insistence and stood scowling at his wild-haired demon of a partner as Fawkes snapped off a couple of shots before Hobbes could escape.

Darien raised the little cardboard camera for another shot out towards Alcatraz and paused halfway through the motion. "Uh, Hobbesy? Is that your contact?" he asked as a burly, hirsute giant of a man in a worn purple windbreaker with a yarmulke clipped to his curling mane of black hair came wading through the crowds directly for them. Lesser mortals in his path were forced to move or literally be trampled beneath size 15 construction boots.

Hobbes grinned and stepped forward to greet the enormous bearded man approaching them with an outstretched hand. "Boris!" he said, and was promptly caught up in a rib-cracking embrace that lifted him off his feet.

"Bobby Hobbes!" was the reply in almost impenetrable Russian-accented English. "Where have you been, tovarich? It must have been 10 years since I saw you last!"

Hobbes was kissed loudly on each cheek, then set back on the planks with a slap to the back that nearly overbalanced him. "Boris, meet my new partner, Darien Fawkes. Fawkes, this is an old comrade of mine: Boris Turpasian," he made the introductions, amused when Fawkes warily extended a hand and was embraced in his turn, eyes nearly popping out of his skull with the strength of the grip around his ribs.

"Fox? What sort of name is this? Fox. Like the FBI man on X-Files?" the big Russian grinned toothily, the gold dental work flashing in the bright afternoon sun.

Darien gasped for air before replying. "Uh, no, it's FAWKES," he enunciated clearly.

"That is what I say: Fox. Well, then, you must be Scully," Boris laughed as he addressed this last quip to Hobbes, who took the bad joke in stride. "So what brings the FBI to San Francisco, my friend?" Turpasian went on, and Hobbes felt no need to correct Boris's assumption, whether it was based on his past employment with that agency, or on an old TV show.

"The usual. This time, suspected terrorists with an axe to grind, and plans to screw around with stuff they'd be better off leaving alone," Hobbes responded with a vague wave of a hand for emphasis. "I figured not much goes on in this town that you don't know about, so of course I hadda ask you if you'd caught wind of a band of crazy South Americans planning to take out any broadcast towers around here." Hobbes watched Boris's face closely, scanning for veracity in his old snitch's expression.

The shuttered look that greeted his request told him Turpasian knew something. The trick was going to be getting it out of him. "Heard anything in the wind about a guy named Javier? How 'bout Dante?" he asked calmly.

Turpasian shook his leonine head in the negative. "No, my friend, I am afraid those names mean nothing to me," he said comfortably, the gold-filled smile flashing again.

"How about a chick by the name of Alvarez?" Bobby asked, and this time there was a palpable reaction. The shutters had slammed over the bonhomie in the Russian's eyes, and Hobbes knew he'd have the devil's own time getting any useful information out of the man.

"No, I am sorry, Bobby, my friend. No 'chick' named Alvarez has been brought to my attention," he said stolidly.

Hobbes cocked his head, never breaking eye contact with Boris as he addressed his partner. "Hear that Fawkesy? The o-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-d stonewall. I come all this way to see an old friend, and first thing outta his mouth is a lie." He shook his head sadly.

Behind him, Bobby could feel Fawkes take a couple steps closer, ready to back him up, whatever his play, and the familiar warm-fuzzies of friendship and trust warmed him, emboldening his next comment to Turpasian. "I guess all those nights we spent drinking Stoli and trading bull-hooey was just so much hot air, huh, Boris? All those hard-luck stories you told me about Natalia, and her brother? Just another play for sympathy. Guess straightening out your green card mess wasn't worth anything to you after all, huh?" He narrowed his eyes, schooling his expression into one of his 'tough agent' looks. "So. I guess when your renewal comes up next May, you won't be needin' any recommendations from a Fed," he finished, glancing at the fingernails of his left hand with assumed casualness.

"Bobby," Boris clucked, hands spread wide, disappointment on his features. "Would I lie to you, my old friend?"

"Like a rug, 'my friend', like a rug," Bobby snapped, fiercely. "So. What's it gonna be, Boris? A little information? Or a one way ticket to the Gulag?"

Hobbes knew the threat was hardly an idle one; Turpasian had fled St. Petersburg twenty years before, three steps ahead of the Russian Mafiya don whose under-age daughter he'd just eloped with. He'd made a name for himself here in San Francisco 10 years earlier, selling cloned cell phones in mass quantities and moving on to other, more lucrative crimes. Hobbes had done him a few favors, and had solidified a certain 'understanding' with the Russian bear. As long as the Russian Mob wasn't involved, Boris would spill whatever he knew on whomever Bobby needed info on. Turpasian's reluctance to talk now told him that there was at least the chance of a Russian link, somewhere.

"Hobbes, my friend. You and I have known each other for many years. Surely, you would not do such a thing? What of Natalia? And my baby daughter?" Turpasian turned a wounded, soulful look on Hobbes.

Bobby grinned humorlessly. "Sophia is what, 16 by now? Sorry. The sob story isn't cutting it, pal. She's a citizen. No way she'd be goin' back to the motherland when Homeland Security comes to toss your ass onto the first flight back to St. Petersburg. So what's it gonna be, Boris? You gonna tell me what I want to know? Or am I gonna make a few calls and bring down a world of trouble on you?" He crossed his arms over his chest, aggressively.

Turpasian slumped slightly, but Hobbes couldn't tell if it was simply more melodrama or if he'd actually gotten through to the mobster. The man's next words showed he'd made his point, though.

"Very well, my old friend, very well. But for the usual reasons, you will understand why I can't be specific," he conceded at last. "I have heard rumors. But ONLY rumors, Bobby. I take no responsibility for their accuracy," Boris said slowly, glancing around furtively. "I thought that when you called me to meet you here --" he gestured at the piers and at the floating man-made island across the marina in particular. "You must have already heard about Alvarez's group... She is supposed to connect with some of her crew over there, at Forbes Island, today," he said, voice dropping in volume so that it was hard to hear over the wind off the bay waters.

Hobbes eyed his contact warily, ruminating on the fact that Turpasian had arrived at this meet already knowing what Bobby wanted to ask him about. There could be only one of two logical explanations; either the Russians were somehow involved, or Jones and his FBI cronies had been blundering around the city like a herd of elephants and had alerted the whole criminal underworld to their unsubtle interest in Javier, Dante and Alvarez. Cynically, he suspected he knew which of the two was the more likely prospect. "You already talk to the Feds about this?" he asked.

The scowl and reluctant narrowing of eyes told him that Boris had probably at least caught wind of federal interest in the trio and whatever they had planned.

"So. What, she's gonna meet her gang here for after-work cocktails or something?" he pressed for more information. "If you know that much, then you probably know more. Like where she's staying. Or where she and her thugs are gonna meet up for their little terrorist hoedown," he went on, not cutting the Russian any slack. "So spill it, if you don't want me rethinking my contributions to your comfortable lifestyle in the good ol' US of A."

The wounded look was back in force, and Turpasian's dark eyes held every bit as much of the kicked puppy look as his partner could pull off in similar circumstances. "Bobby! How many times do I have to say? All I know is what rumor tells me."

"And what does 'rumor' tell you about what these loose canons are up to? Huh? Where are they staying? It's a big haystack, Boris. I want a little better idea where the needle is before I go tearing up the place."

Exasperated, Turpasian threw up his hands. "Hobbes, you disappoint me," he complained. "Again, I don't know for sure, I have only --"

"Rumors," Fawkes and Hobbes filled in, in unison.

"Exactly," Boris nodded. Another quick glance around to check for eavesdroppers, and his voice lowered. "I heard something about a place in Bernal Heights, out past the Mission district," he confessed reluctantly. "But then, I also heard she might be somewhere on Russian Hill," he amended, and Hobbes groaned internally. "But I've also heard that you aren't the only ones looking for this woman... and someone may know more about where to find her than I do. Someone with 'ears', if you understand me?"

"Not exactly," Hobbes crossed his arms over his chest. "Why don't you explain it to me?"

Turpasian glanced warily around one more time, then leaned forward to whisper into Bobby's ear.

Hobbes glared at Turpasian, annoyed. "If I find out you're lying, Boris, you aren't gonna be able to find a hole deep enough to hide in," he promised.

The sad-eyed stare he got back was right up there with one of Darien's best. "Bobby, I would never do such a thing to an old friend," he protested. "Now, I must be going. Natalia and I are teaching at the Synagogue's youth service tonight."

Hobbes felt his eyebrows rise in surprise, and he shook his head in bemusement. "Very public spirited of you, Boris -- as long you don't end up recruiting the kids into your cell phone racket," he added, a hint of cynicism in his tone.

"Bobby. I've given up the cloning business. You know that," Boris chastised Hobbes.

"Yeah. Right. You, give up a license to print money? I can SO see you doing that, Boris," Hobbes shook his head disbelievingly, ignoring the fresh flash of aggrieved woe on Turpasian's face.

They said their good-byes, another round of rib-crushing hugs ending the meeting, and when Turpasian had faded into the crowds of tourists, Hobbes and Fawkes exchanged looks.

"So, uh, you worked the Russian Mob?" Darien asked.

Hobbes couldn't tell if his partner was impressed, or pissed off that he hadn't known before. He shrugged nonchalantly. "Hey, I've worked a lot of criminal gangs in my day, Fawkes."

"Yeah, but the Russians, Hobbes? I mean, I figured Yuri was kind of an isolated incident, you know?" Fawkes said. "One of a kind?"

Hobbes grinned. "You jealous, Penelope?" he teased, and glanced back the way Boris had vanished. Abruptly, his good humor vanished as Jones and some other Fibbie in a suit even more ill-fitting than Jonesy's clattered onto the planks of dock H, heading straight for Forbes Island. "Frickin' hell!" he swore violently. "Jones!"

"The Humvee's bugged, that's the only explanation!" Hobbes roared, stalking back through the Disneylandesque shopping mall.

"Bobby, we only got here yesterday. When would anyone have had time to do that?" Darien lagged behind, looking wistfully at an ice cream store as they power-walked past.

"Fawkes, don't you ever learn? We're federal agents. If we'd noticed anyone planting the damn bug, we'd have known about it already, capiche?" Hobbes nearly galloped up the three flights of stairs to their parking level, charging ahead of a family of 10 all squabbling about where they wanted to go first. The Hummer looked like a hulking camouflage green tank amongst the more conventional SUVs and Hondas, especially because Hobbes had parked it straddling two parking spaces to protect the finish.

"You take the passenger side and I'll search this side." Hobbes instructed, peering suspiciously under the chassis.

"But what exactly are we looking for?" Darien knew he sounded a little whiny, but he really could have used an ice cream cone just about then. Two scoops, raspberry and thin mint, with sprinkles, on a sugar cone, not one of those smaller, tasteless square ones. Maybe even a dollop of chocolate sauce on the top. His mouth was salivating already as he bent double to catch Hobbes' eye under the car.

"Anything that looks like it doesn't belong."

Darien pursed his lips over that. "I've never owned a Hummer before. How would I know if something didn't belong?"

"Fawkes, you're being obstructive."

"Obstructive? Moi?" Darien pretended wounded dignity as Hobbes inspected every inch of the vehicle, grumbling under his breath like Muttley in the old cartoons Darien used to watch on Saturday mornings with Kevin. Wearing his pajamas, and eating Lucky Charms from the box. That made his stomach growl. He ignored it, copying Hobbes' lead and examining the big boxy car from every angle, inside and out.

Several people on their way to Pier 39 stopped by to ask if they needed help finding anything, but Hobbes just waved them away. Darien smiled more politely at a friendly looking pair of girls and they offered him some of their mini-donuts. Two of the things didn't equal one Krispy Kreme, but they gave him a sugar boost and he went nose to carpet under the seats to scope out any listening devices.

After nearly an hour of searching, even Bobby Hobbes had to admit defeat. He slumped in the seat, tapping his fingers on the dash. "Damn, the car is clean."

"That's relative." Darien wiped his fingers on a Kleenex, but the grease from the rear axle didn't come off. He silently handed another tissue to Hobbes. "Hear me out, here. I know you don't want to think Jonesy could find his way out of a paper bag ..."

"Not even with instructions." Hobbes thumped the steering wheel for emphasis.

"But what if--by some weird alignment of the planets--Jones actually is one step ahead of us?"

"Impossible." Hobbes grumped, steering the car out of the lot. The exorbitant fee to exit the place further enhanced his black mood.

"So is freeze dried ice cream, but it's available in any camping store. And sounds good about now."

"You hungry, hollow legs?" Hobbes raised his eyebrows.

"Like about willing to even eat calamari at this point." Darien pointed at one of the numerous fish markets that dotted Jefferson Street.

"Scoma's sound all right to you?" Hobbes sighed.

"As long as you can park this thing," Darien said, dubiously.

"Shoulda stayed in the last lot." Hobbes frowned, and turned off the main drag of Fisherman's Wharf onto one of the equally crowded side streets. After much traversing of thoroughfares, they finally ended up at Ghirardelli Square for dinner, where Darien got a huge sundae with all the toppings he could ask for.

The narrow streets of San Francisco were infinitely more nerve-wracking to drive through after dark. Hobbes steered the Hummer around slower drivers with competence (maybe driving Golda for years had been good practice), and a daring that made Darien think that even ice cream hadn't cooled his partner's annoyance with Jones.

"What are you going to do, drop me off again and go stew somewhere outside the perimeter?" he asked.

Hobbes grunted. "Security's never airtight, right? You say that all the time. We're just gonna help out a little. Make sure they've got things sewed up tight."

"OK. Don't blame me if Jones sees us and pitches a fit, though." Darien stretched, then rooted in his pocket for his cell phone. "We're not there yet. Do I have time to call Eberts?" Without waiting for a reply, Darien found the number in his electronic address book and dialed.

Hobbes sighed noisily.

Darien ignored him, listened to the phone ringing, and watched dusk continue to deepen outside the windows of the Hummer.

"This is the Agency."

And he plays receptionist, too, Darien thought.

"Ebes!" he declaimed, relaxing back into his seat. "How you doing?"

"Darien?" There were a long few moments of silence--confused or tentative, it was impossible to tell. "I'm well," Eberts finally managed, clearly falling in with the mood Darien was going for. "How is your vacation...progressing?"

"Oh, it's fine," Darien said airily. "It'd be even more fine, though, if you could pass on some fishing tips."

"Fishing?" For a moment, Eberts sounded puzzled. He covered it pretty smoothly, though. "Of course, Darien, anything for a fellow enthusiast. Uh, within reason."

"Actually, this is more like information to settle a bet." Darien had tried to come up with a fishing analogy, but that could only be stretched so far.

Eberts' silence was as good as a disapproving stare. "What do you need to know?"

"I thought I'd pick your brain about ways--totally hypothetical, mind you--that a terrorist might use to attack an EMP-protected communications system." Darien paused to let that sink in. "Assume that security is tight, and that all personnel on the project have been verified and triple-checked. Hobbes insists that something like this could be airtight, totally defended. I disagree, and you're my ammo provider."

"Let me think," Eberts said, in a distracted tone. "Hypothetically speaking, there are several different methods such a terrorist might employ. For one, he could take out the broadcasting hardware. EMP isn't the only way of doing that; a bomb or missile might work just as well. Or internal sabotage."

"Yeah?" Darien sat up straighter and reached for a piece of paper and pen, to take notes in the dark. "What about the other side of it?"

"The software could be corrupted," Eberts said doubtfully. "That would almost certainly be an inside job. Unless...."

"Unless...?" Darien fidgeted.

"With a sophisticated hacker, someone who has the knowledge or experience to take down government-level firewalls, and a good engineer, he could possibly mimic the frequency in order to piggyback his own signal." His voice trailed off. "It's rare, I'm not sure anyone has managed it successfully yet, but it can't be quite ruled out. Hypothetically speaking."

Darien scratched his head, careful not to mess up what was left of his hairdo. "Which of those options would be the most spectacularly destructive?"

"That would depend on whether the bomb used would cause heavy collateral damage, or on what sort of signal they planned to piggyback on the carrier. I am, of course, assuming a government or military communication network."

"Yeah, right." Darien grimaced at Hobbes, who shrugged. "So what, besides a pet hacker, would such a terrorist need to pull that off?"

"Um." Eberts hesitated. "A high location preferably in line of sight to the initial testing location, from which to broadcast. A computer technician of some skill. Powerful broadcasting equipment."

"And what would we, or, uh, another fishing expedition, need to catch onto that kind of tampering?"

Eberts rattled off a few brand-name items, which Darien scribbled down, then added, "Basically all you need to do is be able to read the frequencies of the waves from the initial broadcast. Anything that can differentiate between them will help. Oh, and maybe a GPS, to plot the location."

Darien scribbled a few more notes. "Ebes, you are the man."

"Hey." Hobbes didn't look over, but his tone was forceful. "Fat Man had a contact at that Meyer Foundation, back around Kate. Betcha he's still got a line in to them."

"Isn't that guy dead?" Darien asked, after a moment's recollection.

Hobbes nodded. "Sure, but the Official wouldn't cultivate just one contact in a company like Meyer."

"Yeah, right. Ebes, you hear that? Think you could check it out, in case Jones and his fellow Fibbies made a mistake about it being an inside job?"

"I'll try." There was a scuffle on the other end of the line, and Eberts gave a put-upon sigh. "I really have to go, Darien, I have some paperwork to catch up on. Good luck."

Darien hung up, and shoved the list of items into Hobbes' range of vision. "Think we can charge these to the Agency account? If we have to put them on mine, I'm keeping them."

Hobbes growled to himself, jerking the Hummer into a sudden left turn. Darien peered out his window quickly enough to spot the cause: an FBI agent patrolling the sidewalk. "Anythin' on there we could use to get the dirt on what's going down in there? They've got it sewed up tighter than an accountant's ass."

"Told you," Darien couldn't help saying. "If we can't get close enough, can we hit the hay? I'm tired."

Hobbes shot him a concerned look, which Darien ignored. It wasn't a lie, but if faking a bit helped, he'd go for that.

The Hummer headed back towards the Red Lion.

"Nothin' happened last night. But we do know Alvarez is still in town," Bobby stated emphatically as he unlocked the Hummer and climbed behind the wheel the following morning. "Or Jones wouldn't be wanderin' around the city like the rube he is, stirring up the bottom feeders."

"Hobbes, it's my turn to drive," Darien pointed out as he stood beside the driver's door, refusing to let his partner close the door.

"Do you know your way around this burg?" Hobbes asked impatiently, fingers tapping out a staccato beat on the steering wheel.

"About as well as you do," Darien asserted with a scowl.

"When was the last time you were up here?" Bobby asked stubbornly.

"1989, when Liz and I pulled a few jobs locally," he replied immediately.

"Yeah?" Hobbes asked, momentarily distracted by this news flash. "Well, I got you beat, Buckwheat. I was here on assignment for six months with the FBI back in '96. Age before beauty, kid." With that, Bobby tugged the door shut, nearly closing Fawkes' fingers in it, and Darien glared at his partner through the driver's side window for a long moment before circling the hood and getting in on the passenger side.

"So where to next, Batman?" Darien asked sarcastically as he belted himself in.

"The local version of 'Open Sesame,' if you gotta know," Hobbes replied and maneuvered the big SUV out of a parking space meant for a much smaller vehicle. "Boris figures that with all the Federal interest in Javier's crew, the local gossips are keeping their ears peeled for anything that might make 'em a buck. Best place to look for 'ears' is at the only over-the-counter surveillance hawker in this town," Hobbes elaborated.

"But I thought test number two was this morning. Shouldn't we be there, just in case?" Darien inquired curiously as they merged into traffic.

Hobbes snorted ironically. "You really think the Feds are gonna let us inside three miles of the real action? Nope, my friend, we're on our own," Hobbes replied, stomping on the brakes to keep from running over a jaywalking pedestrian. "At least, until we can get our hands on that gear Ebes tipped us off to."

Within 20 minutes, they had crossed half the town and ended up in a former industrial area out along the southeastern waterfronts. Derelict factories, rundown homes, and a generally worn-out feel made the place look like parts of South Central LA. Darien found it depressing. It didn't help that there wasn't a single green thing to be seen anywhere, unlike the abundance of parks in the rest of the city.

Hobbes peered intently at the street signs, many of which were pocked with bullet holes, and finally found the one he was looking for, wheeling around the corner at a speed far faster than Darien was braced for. He ended up pressed into the passenger side window as Hobbes parked illegally, blocking an alley.

A storefront, far slicker than most on this block, met his gaze, and he grinned. 'Open Sesame' had nothing on this place. "Man. Hobbesy, you sure can pick 'em," he complimented his partner.

"Ya think?" Bobby smirked in satisfaction. "You can thank Boris for this little lead."

Together, they stepped into the shop, Hobbes holding the door so Fawkes could precede him. Darien paused a moment just inside the door and looked around, admiring the vast array of hi-tech gizmos and toys.

Hobbes stepped around him and headed for the counter, where the proprietor was focused on the screen of a laptop. "You Brown?" he asked, leaning an elbow onto the burnished chrome.

The man looked up, Ray Bans shoved up onto the top of his shaved head. Dark skin gleamed like mahogany in the late summer morning light that streamed in through the front windows and he flashed a blinding smile that was equal parts menace and politeness. "Sebastian to my friends," was the reply.

"Hey, there, Brown, I'd be interested in looking at some signal interceptors," Darien said confidently, before Hobbes could open his mouth and blow the deal. He really did trust his partner, but even Hobbes' paranoia couldn't hold a candle to some of the conspiracy-theorists that ran this kind of business. "I've got a shopping list," he informed the proprietor. "I'm going to need a parabolic mic, a remote audio monitor, and I'd really like to see what you have in an advanced audio transmitter detector, maybe with a broadband IR probe?"

"You would, huh?" Brown responded, reaching up to pull his sunglasses down over his eyes. "I've been down this road before, man. IR probes are strictly counter-surveillance, and not legal in this town without a badge... So how's about showing me yours?"

The blank black glass ellipses reflected Darien's visage back at him, and he had the bizarre experience of seeing himself as someone on the other side of the criminal equation saw him. It was unsettling, to say the least. Particularly since once upon a time, he'd been where Brown was now. He'd been made. As a cop.

Fawkes shuddered, the visceral reaction unmistakable, and Brown grinned, this time, the expression genuine. "Busted," he muttered.

"New to the game?" Sebastian asked ironically.

"Not exactly," Darien admitted. "Just new to this side of it."

Brown laughed. "Snitch?" he asked

"I wish. No, let's just call it... complicated," Fawkes sighed, wondering when his mindset had done a 180 from criminal to good guy. "So. If I was looking for... say, that IR probe?"

"Strictly illegal equipment," Brown rebuked. "You think I need the kind of headache the law breathing down my neck gets me? I don't sell IR probes."

Hobbes snorted, interrupting the face-off as he whipped out his Federal shield, flashed it at Brown and leaned in over the counter to glare at the shopkeeper. "And my great aunt Martha was an astronaut, buddy," Hobbes scoffed. "We want to know how many of them probe things you've sold in the past two weeks, pal. You can tell us the easy way, or you can make us come back with a warrant." The fact that the partners were hopelessly out of their jurisdiction was a fact that Hobbes carefully avoided mentioning.

Brown peered down at Hobbes over the rim of his shades, eyes narrowing. "You're looking for Alvarez."

Darien felt his jaw drop.

Brown snorted at his reaction. "You think I'm some yokel? You're not the only cops looking for this broad. Try one of my best customers. Guy by the name of Hung. Sammy Hung. He hangs in a crib on the corner of Leavenworth and Lombard. If anyone has heard anything about this Alvarez broad, it'll have been him. He's got some of the best amateur surveillance equipment in the city. And even if he hasn't picked up her signal, he still knows practically everyone in town. His grapevine makes Napa Valley look like a desert. Sometimes, low tech is better," he smirked.

Fawkes caught himself gaping and made a conscious effort to get a grip. "Yeah, sometimes it is," he agreed, turning to Hobbes, who was looking as bemused as he felt. "You get that, Bobby?"

"Got it," Hobbes said, looking rather stunned.

"Maybe we'd better get our groove on, then," Darien suggested, nodding at Brown. "Thanks, man," he directed this to the shopkeeper.

"No problem, white boy," Sebastian grinned, ducking his head slightly in acknowledgment. "Watch your back."

Darien nodded and turned away, catching Hobbes by the elbow and urging him out the door.

A moment later, Darien popped back in. "I really am looking to buy a signal interceptor," he said, guiltily.

Sebastian shook his head, still grinning. "You got a better description of what you want?"

Darien pulled out the list Eberts had dictated and checked it for specifics. "A CPM-700, if you've got one. If not, then a CMS-15 with the carrying case and long range antenna."

Darien held his breath as the hood of the Hummer seemed to dip further forward than absolutely necessary as they crested one of the infamous hills of San Francisco and hurtled down towards the ocean. "You think you could slow down there, Steve McQueen? This isn't a Mustang, and we're not re-enacting scenes from Bullitt."

"Whatsa matter, Fawkes, scared of a few measly hills? I'm going the speed limit, but we gotta get to the rendezvous point first."

"And alive," Darien muttered darkly, clinging to the door handle.

Hobbes went left up a slope so steep Darien felt like the Hummer would surely roll back down the hill when they came to a stop sign at the top. Even Hobbes seemed nervous about taking his foot off the brake when they were clinging to the side of what would have qualified as a mountain in any other city. He gunned the motor the entire time they were stopped, then lurched forward with a squeal of tires onto the cross street. They bounced over the cable car tracks, a weird humming coming up from the underneath the roadway.

"What's that?" Darien asked, craning his neck behind him. A cable car was bearing down on them, the conductor clang-clanging his bell and waving his arm in a very obvious "get the hell out of there" signal. "Hobbes!"

"I see, but something's holding up traffic up ahead." Hobbes inched the massive vehicle far enough over the tracks to let the cable car pass. The ground shook as if a minor earthquake were occurring until the famous rolling landmark was completely past, and still the weird humming buzzed their ears until it had crested the hill and was out of sight.

"Where exactly are we trying to get to?" Darien asked. They were in a beautiful old neighborhood, full of Victorian and Edwardian houses perched on steeply angled streets. Some were on such a sharp grade that the city planners must have decided they were impassible by any sort of conveyance and had allowed nature to take over. An overgrown park topped the highest peaks, barring their passage. So, it had taken Hobbes longer than expected to get to this point.

"Down there!" Hobbes pointed when the line of cars in front of them moved forward.

"Oh, my God..."Darien wanted to close his eyes, but couldn't. Like witnessing a massive train wreck, he had to watch as the Hummer bumped onto the brick roadway and veered slightly left onto what was frequently advertised as the crookedest street in the word. Actually, this was only one small block of the much longer Lombard Street, but it was by degrees the scariest and most beautiful. The tank-like Hummer was never meant to navigate the hairpin turns that took them down to Leavenworth, even at a slow crawl. Adding to the nightmare, the cars ahead of them would stop every few feet so that tourists could snap a picture of the vibrant red geraniums growing alongside the curb, and the grumbling locals hiking their way up the street with their groceries. Darien couldn't imagine living on this street year round. "Hobbes, we gotta turn back, we're never going to make it."

"How do you expect me to do that, glandboy? There's an SUV from Omaha behind us with a load of kids. Nowhere to go but down." Hobbes negotiated the next switchback with the skill of a racecar driver. "I thought you said you'd been here before. You musta driven on the hills."

"I didn't have a legal driver's license," Darien confessed, calming now that they were more than halfway down the brick-paved incline. "Liz didn't want me getting picked up on a petty offense. Besides, she always drove on the flat. We were casing a house in St. John's Wood, on a normal street."

"We're here." Hobbes pulled off of Lombard as a dozen Japanese tourists snapped a photo of the Humvee on Lombard Street and double-parked next to a Cooper Mini small enough to have fit in their trunk. He pointed to a three story apartment building. "Wonder which floor he's on."

"Uh, I'm betting the top one? Super secret agent types like the vantage points," Darien pointed out, seeing a wizened old man totter out of the building, pause to catch his breath after the walk across the sidewalk and then wave frantically at them. "I'm thinking that's our guy," he added. The Japanese tourists took a picture of the elderly man, too, before herding back into their bus, which had been cleverly made up to look like a cable car. "Doesn't exactly know how to keep a low profile, does he?"

"It's a disguise, Fawkes." Hobbes climbed down from the high driver's seat. "At least, I think it is."

Darien slid down low in his seat, Quicksilver flowing out over his body in a glistening wave. "I think I'll watch."

"Suit yourself." Hobbes approached the old man, grinning engagingly. He had to put out a hand to steady the old geezer when he nearly tripped over a piece of trash on the cracked pavement. "Got some information for me?"

"You the crazy man tracking Alvarez?" The old man smiled, but he'd forgotten to put in his top teeth so he looked like a Chinese jack-o'-lantern.

"You Sammy Hung?" Hobbes crossed his arms waiting for more information, his brow furrowed in a frown of disapproval. Listening through the open window of the car, Darien grinned invisibly. Hobbes might actually be a little crazy on occasion, but he didn't like people he'd just met saying so.

"How'd you know who we were lookin' for?" Hobbes asked suspiciously.

"Sebastian called me," Hung said dismissively, waving off the concern. "I caught a signal on my oscillator a short time ago, coming from Coit Tower." Hung pointed to a tall, narrow stone structure on the top of the opposite hill. It looked vaguely Italian. And very phallic. "Probably ain't what you're after, though. Because the encrypted codes I hacked into during the last trial were Fed."

"You sure it was our government?" Hobbes asked

"Not the North Koreans, mister," the old guy snarked. He might look like a throwback to the Eisenhower era, but he was sharp as a tack.

Darien tried to make sense of the new information. Just exactly how many trials were going on at the same time? Were they being faked out, or just constantly the last ones to know what was going on?

"Then all I'm interested is Alvarez," Hobbes insisted.

"I need to boost the signal on my receiver ..." The old geezer squinted in the sun. "Can't really get a good reception with these hills unless I ..."

Hobbes grumbled under his breath, but Darien could just make out, "...last time I take a vacation that our buddy E-berts recommends." Bobby dug into his pocket and pulled out two twenties. Darien sincerely hoped that wasn't the money for their next meal or he was going to starve. He was definitely going to insist they stop at the nearest Starbucks for something to fill his perennially hollow interior.

"Could be that Alvarez has a place further west on Lombard, past Octavia." Hung secreted the money into an inner pocket of the ancient Mao jacket he wore. "Supposed to be a safe house, but Sammy Hung sees all."

"Not hard to do sitting up on the side of a hill all day," Hobbes agreed. "So we go back down Lombard?"

"Hobbes!" Darien groaned inwardly when he realized they were going mountain climbing in the Hummer once again. He let himself materialize as they pulled away from Hung's place. Another busload of tourists, this one comprised of uniformly blond, blue-eyed people, all jumped out at the bottom of the crookedest street and snapped photos of the curvy landmark, and of Hung waving at them with a gap-toothed smile as the partners pulled away and headed the rest of the way down now-straight Lombard street.

Following all the other rental cars invading the North Beach area, they crossed Columbus, which angled across the otherwise squared-off grid of streets at a slant and turned west onto Northpoint. Darien pointed out the beautiful brick buildings making up Ghirardelli Square with a decided pout. The sundaes at the ice cream shop there were to die for. The one he'd had the night before had triggered a vivid recollection of sharing a confection called the Alcatraz Rock with Liz--sinfully rich mounds of rocky road ice cream with layers of chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

Hobbes had a completely different agenda than filling Darien's stomach and ignored his pleas that he would waste away very soon with a curt, "Take some algae powder, Fawkes."

Darien grumpily mixed one of Claire's disgusting packets into their last bottle of Arrowhead water and guzzled it down just as they pulled up at the address Hung had provided.

And to their dismay, there was Jonesy, eerily one step ahead of them even now. He and another Fed in the ubiquitous dark suit and dull, prep school tie walked over to an unremarkable dark sedan, both looking like they'd missed the boat themselves. Just as Jonesy yanked open the passenger door, he smacked the hood of the car. "Alvarez is gone! Where the hell is she now?" They could hear the protest even from across the street in their vehicle.

"How does this keep happening?" Hobbes hissed, infuriated. "How the hell is that brain-dead moron, Jones, getting the intel before us?" He smacked his palm against the steering wheel as he had the last time they'd been upstaged, glaring out the window of the Hummer with a look that could have melted steel. He sat there fuming until the equally frustrated Fibbies piled back into their respective vehicles and roared off.

Darien cleared his throat. "So, Hobbesy, if we missed the party and there's no canapés left, can we go eat?" he asked plaintively.

Darien, jean-clad legs dangling off the roof of the Hummer, steadied the parabolic dish with one hand and snapped the fingers of the other to get his partner's attention. "Hobbes! You got that cable?"

"Hold your horses." The shorter agent stood on tiptoe to shove the end of the electronic cord into Darien's hand. "Everything's hooked up. You comin' down?"

This high up on the southwestern side of the city, the sun poured golden across the long ribbons of fog that still wove through the streets below them. It threw back flashes from the upper stories of skyscrapers, and lined the steel beams of the distant Sutro Tower in brilliant white. Darien checked the position of the dish, pointed in that general direction. Hopefully it would work as advertised. "Nah. I think I'll stay up here, make sure we don't lose anything to the wind. Hey, could you grab my sunglasses?"

"Get 'em yourself," Hobbes retorted as he climbed into the seat below. "Here we go."

Darien checked his watch. 11:29 a.m. Nothing altered perceptibly as the minute changed over, but Hobbes exclaimed, "We got something here. Sutro, Bank of America, Coit Tower...all of 'em lit up like Christmas trees. Different from the base calibrations we got from Ebes, too."

"The new system in action? Are we sure none of those are Alvarez, trying to mess around?" Darien checked the cords holding the dish in place, then launched himself off the Hummer.

Hobbes was poking at the laptop keyboard. The map of the city that filled its screen was certainly bright, webbed over with multicolored strings and beams of light. Three spots glowed an ultraviolet shade of purple. "Not sure, but it's a good guess. That schedule you snagged does mention a couple other sites. That's Sutro--" he pointed to the largest splash of color "--and those are the secondary sites. The ones they didn't tell us about."

"Eleven-thirty a.m., and allllll's wellll," Darien yodeled.

"For now." Hobbes kept his gaze glued to the screen. Darien wondered what he thought he might see.

There hadn't been any news of problems with the first trial test the night before. In spite of the general stir that Jones' hunt for Alvarez had caused, he was starting to think this whole thing might be a wild goose chase. Not that I mind getting Jones' britches in a knot. Darien leaned back against the Hummer to wait and enjoy the view.

Hobbes' puzzled voice broke into his reverie. "Fawkes, you see this?"

Darien hung over his partner's shoulder. "See what?" Oh, wait.... "The light's brighter. They crank up the power?"

"I don't think so." Hobbes pointed to the numbers that lined up neatly on one side of the screen. "Those are the frequencies, right?"

"So Eberts said." Darien squinted. "They've changed? Since the beginning of the test or after that?"

"After. Just a second ago." Hobbes traced all three locations with a fingertip. "All of them changed. I tried to get a location, where the new frequencies are comin' from, but--" He threw his hands up.

Darien fumbled for his cell phone, gaze still on the laptop's readout. "So are we still thinking an inside job? I'm gonna call Eberts, see if he found anything about the Meyer Foundation guys."

For once, Hobbes didn't object.

Eberts did, though, at least to the theory. "Darien, I did check into the Meyer Foundation scientists associated with this project," he said firmly. "In my opinion, all of them are quite loyal to the foundation, and to our country in general."

"Really?" Darien didn't bother hiding the sarcasm. "No free spirits on the crew? Nobody who's been screwed by the government?"

"This situation isn't the same as the one with Kate's computer." Eberts' voice had dropped. "This technology will work for military, government, and civilian uses, and it is strictly a defensive measure."

"But someone could get bought off. Right?" He put a hand over the mouthpiece and nudged at Hobbes. "We're wireless, right? Can you email Eberts the frequencies you're reading now?" he asked in a stage whisper.

Hobbes shot him an approving look, and quickly pasted the information into an email and sent it on its way to the Agency 400 miles south.

"In this case, I doubt it, Darien. Besides...." The 'ding' of an email alert followed by the tapping of a keyboard came through loud and clear. "These frequencies you sent me. They vary more widely than I would expect if an inside source were using the system itself and simply altering or corrupting the content. And the altered signals are diffuse. I doubt you would have picked them up so clearly if they had all been sent from the same machine."

Hobbes leaned over and addressed the phone. "Can ya give us anything more practical? As in, useful?"

"Well...." Eberts actually sounded abashed. "Not much, at this point. Except that I'd place the broadcast location pretty high up. It's escaped a lot of the interference it might get down in the buildings and fog."

Darien scanned the skyline, picking out the highest roofs and walls of glass windows. "Yeah, all right. Thanks for the tips, Ebes."

"Certainly, Darien. Good luck."

Hobbes spent the next hour pouring over the laptop. Darien climbed back on the Hummer's roof, tinkering with the direction of the dish, and of the GPS locator. Nothing more specific came to light.

On the other hand, nothing in the city below them exploded or disintegrated.

Bored, Darien finally flopped halfway over the edge, to stare upside-down at his partner. "OK, Hobbes, this test is over, right? With no major disasters. Now can we have lunch?"

"What happened to our precedent-setting vacation? Huh?" Darien sprawled in one of the chairs in their hotel--the one closest to the breeze coming through the window. Naturally, the air conditioning in this place was non-existent.

Hobbes made a shushing motion and returned his attention to his cell phone.

Darien snorted, and turned his attention to his Slurpee. "I mean, we just did the work of a freaking army of agents, all on our own. What, seven different skyscrapers? And we had to talk, or bribe or sneak our way in, just to look for we-don't-even-know-what. I don't know about you, but that is not my idea of a fun afternoon."

"I let you pick where we went for lunch," Hobbes protested in a stage whisper, hand covering the mouthpiece of his phone.

"Especially since we didn't find a trace of Alvarez or Dante or any more of Javier's cronies," Darien continued, pretending he hadn't heard his partner at all. "If it wasn't for Eberts' considered opinion, I'd be sure this was such a wild goose chase. In spite of it, I'm still thinking that."

Hobbes held up a hand for silence. "Yeah, just checking in," he said. "Nothing unusual this morning? You, uh.... You're sure?" He nodded, eyes narrowed in thought. "Nope, you're inside, you're my man. Yeah. You got it. Thanks." Hobbes lowered his phone and sat pondering.

"You going to tell me this is not a wild goose chase?" Darien asked dryly. "That was your last Hobbesnet guy you just checked with, right? And nobody had problems?"

"I dunno." Hobbes shrugged, and tossed his phone onto the table. "Nobody except my buddy at the local Air Force base. They had some kinda glitch in the computers this morning. Timing's right." He grimaced, and stood up to start pacing. "Wish Monroe'd keep herself available."

"Bet you every guy she's ever met says that," Darien noted. "Not that I ever thought you'd admit it. What happened to the superiority of Hobbesnet?"

"It's not about superiority, it's about confirmation of data." Hobbes made it a pronouncement. "Where is Ms. Hotshot this week anyway?"

Darien tipped his cup higher, tapping the bottom to loosen the flavored ice. "Dunno," he said around the mouthful. "Probably off on some secret project with Mike. The one lucky man among us all." He grinned at Hobbes, teeth stained strawberry-red. "Oh, I forgot, you're the one who's gotten lucky with the other Agency beauty--"

Hobbes shot him a glare but took the high ground, refusing to be baited.

Darien would have pursued that endlessly entertaining line of teasing if his cell phone hadn't chosen that moment to ring silently, juddering against the windowsill. He snatched it up. "Fawkes."

The voice was unexpected, its layer of cool covering a tension he hadn't heard earlier in the day. "Hey, white boy."

Sebastian Brown, Darien mouthed at Hobbes, as he sat up and set his Slurpee down. "Out of sheer curiosity, man, how'd you get this number?"

"Professional secret," the technology dealer said smoothly. "You and Shorty still interested in that... merchandise...we talked about?"

"Yes, absolutely. I, ah, assumed it was out of stock." Hobbes was giving Darien a what-the-hell look; Darien waved it off.

"Nah, we just got a shipment." Brown coughed slightly. "You can come check it out as soon as you're free."

"Yeah? Where?"

Brown sighed in exasperation. "You know where to find me just fine," he said dryly, and cut the connection.

Darien returned the phone to his pocket and gave Hobbes a summary of the conversation. "He didn't strike me as someone who'd snitch. Just on general principle, you know?"

Hobbes was halfway out the door already. "Maybe he ran into someone he's willing to break that principle over."

The trip back to Bay View was slower than Darien would have liked, though if anyone had asked him why it seemed so urgent, he wouldn't have been able to come up with an answer.

"Stop twitchin'," Hobbes said, hauling the Hummer's bulk around a sharp corner. "We'll be there as soon as we can. Brown would've said something if his information was time-sensitive."

Darien slouched a bit further down in his seat, fingers dancing impatiently on the armrest.

Hobbes cruised as slowly as he dared past the Spyware shop, scanning the area for anything suspicious--and for parking. Of which there was none, at least on that block.

"Hobbes, let me go check it out." Darien was already a disembodied voice in the passenger's seat. "You go around the block, I'll let you know the sitch, and you can come back me up once you've got the Jolly Green Giant stowed somewhere."

Hobbes sighed. "I dunno, Fawkes."

"He's not gonna see me unless everything looks cool." Darien's door lock popped up, seemingly of its own accord.

Hobbes slowed the Hummer, and did his impression of a driver re-closing a door for the second time on this trip. Then he bent all his powers of observation to finding a parking space.

Darien strolled back along the street to Spyware. The shop itself looked no different than it had that morning, but the door was shut, and didn't move when he tried it with an invisible hand. After trying to peer in through barred and tinted windows, Darien wandered around to the back of the shop, betting that a slick dealer like Brown would have at least one well-protected bolt-hole.

The gate, padlocked and topped with barbed wire, was ajar. Darien slid through and snuck silently across cracked concrete to the patio-slash-loading platform that crossed the back of the shop.

There. Sebastian stepped out onto the patio, escorting a slightly stocky, dark-haired woman. "The last of your order, as promised, and on time," he said, handing her a heavily strapped package about the size of a shoebox.

Darien froze where he stood, frantically recalling the grainy long-distance images Hobbes had shown him: of a stocky, dark, vaguely Hispanic woman.

Jolene Alvarez.

The woman hefted the package in both hands, then set it at her feet and opened the bag slung over her shoulder. "And the rest of your payment. Let me it count it out for you--I enjoy doing business with fair-minded people."

Darien fought an impulse to un-Quicksilver right there, and tackle Alvarez. He glanced around the back lot. The only way out was the gate he'd come in by, and it was enough of a concealed corner that he could keep his secret there.

Not to mention that Hobbes would have his head if he didn't at least try to notify him.

Retreating to the corner by the gate, Darien shed his protective coating and pulled his cell phone out, fingers automatically finding the speed dial for Hobbes.

His partner answered distractedly, muffled by the noise of traffic. "Yeah?"

Darien kept his voice low. "Alvarez is here, buying some tech off Brown. I could use some backup; they're wrapping the deal now."

He could've sworn he heard Hobbes sit up straighter. "I'll be there."

Darien pocketed his phone. The conversation between Alvarez and Brown had gone silent, and no one had passed him, so he slid forward and peered around the corner of the shop.

It was empty. Alvarez was nowhere to be seen. Darien, puzzled, took a few more steps, trying to find the exit she must have used.

The back door of the shop was ajar. Crap. Darien crossed the yard, jumped up on the patio, and nearly fell across the supine body of Sebastian. The dealer, eyes wide in pain, let out a gasp. His hands were clasped across his belly, and blood was darkening the concrete underneath him.

Darien dropped to one knee, instinctively reaching for his cell phone, dialing 9-1-1. "What'd she do, man?"

"Went...out the front," Sebastian ground out. His eyes rolled towards the open back door of his shop.

"9-1-1, what is your emergency?" the dispatcher's cool voice said in Darien's ear.

For a second, Darien hesitated; then he took the hint and bolted into the shop, and up through a back room full of boxes and random bits of electronic junk through the main shop and then to the front door. No one was in the shop, and the door was closed.

"What is your emergency?" the dispatcher repeated.

Darien jerked the door open and stumbled out, looking frantically up and down the street while he tried to gather his wits and answer. "Uh...a guy's been stabbed. I think. He's bleeding pretty badly." He'd almost had her, she couldn't have gotten far....

"What is your location? Sir?"

Darien rattled off the address of the shop, still scanning the street for any sign of Alvarez.

There! A dark head, maybe a couple hundred feet away, ducked into a dingy white car. A few moments later, it pulled out into the street and sped off.

That had to be her. Darien noted the make and model, though it was too far off to get the license plate.

The dispatcher, still on the line, was getting insistent. "Sir, can you give me any more details about what happened? I can help you give First Aid."

Darien ran back through Spyware, pausing in the back room just long enough to pick up the long-sleeved shirt hanging over the back of a chair. "Uh, yeah, he's a black guy, over six foot. Looks like somebody stabbed him at least once, in the abdomen." He dropped down next to Sebastian, wadding the shirt into a pad with one hand.

"There's an ambulance unit and a police car en route," the dispatcher assured Darien. "Until they get there, the best thing you can do is try to stop the bleeding. Find something absorbent, like a..."

Police. Darien became suddenly aware of the shop and the yard, completely empty except for himself and a guy who was bleeding all over the place. Aw, crap. Darien hung up, dropped the phone, and reached down to move Sebastian's hands away from the wound so he could apply pressure with the makeshift pad.

The dealer made a choking noise, but didn't move.

"Hey, man, how you doing?" Darien watched Sebastian worriedly. Of course, his own fingerprints were going to be everywhere. And Alvarez was getting away. Dammit, this wasn't fair. "What'd she do?" Darien asked.

Sebastian drew a wheezing breath. "Knifed me," he whispered. "Stupid."

"Help's already coming, OK?" Darien reached for his phone again. Sebastian stopped him by locking one bloodied hand around his right wrist.

"You get her." Every word seemed to be an effort, but Sebastian pinned his gaze to Darien's and forced them out. "Psycho...bitch...."

"That why you called us?" Darien asked.

Sebastian tried to breathe deeper, but couldn't seem to manage it. "Only psycho...would think of using...Alcatraz...for...." He choked on the last word, and his fingers tightened convulsively around Darien's wrist before loosening and thudding against the concrete floor.

Darien knelt there for a few moments before the lack of breathing sounds, of blinking, of movement really registered. "Brown?" He checked for a pulse.

Nothing.

Darien sat back on his heels, suddenly feeling very tired. There was blood stamped across his snake tattoo, as well as over his other hand. He had to call Hobbes about Alvarez. And then just get out of there, before things got way too complicated.

Hobbes picked up on the second ring. "Fawkes? What's up?"

Darien sighed. "You parked yet?"

"Just found a spot."

"Well, don't take it, all right? Alvarez knifed Brown and took off. She's headed down toward Third, in a white '87 Volvo sedan." Darien looked around, trying to find something to wipe his hands on. "Think you could follow her? I'll stick around here 'til you can come back and get me."

"Really don't like that, Fawkes." Hobbes hedged.

"It's the best lead we've gotten all week. Don't worry, I'll stay outta trouble." Darien hung up on his partner without waiting for a response, and looked around the yard, trying to figure out the best way out of this mess.

A pair of Ray Bans sunglasses sprawled between the body and the back door. The frame was bent, one lens crushed. Someone--Darien or Alvarez--had stepped on it in their rush indoors.

It was at least an hour before Hobbes paused at a light about half a block from Spyware, and noticed the lights and sirens cluttering the street ahead of him. "Oh, hell, Fawkes." He hadn't heard from his partner since he'd started tailing Alvarez. This couldn't possibly be a good sign.

Hobbes inched the Hummer up the street, keeping a sharp eye on the crowd that was gawking at the scene. Two uniformed cops stood near the entrance to Brown's shop. No sign of Fawkes, though, there or in the crowd. Hobbes tried dialing his partner's cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail.

A thump against the passenger side made Hobbes jam on the brakes. The door jerked half way open, something sank heavily onto the seat, denting the leather, and then the door slammed shut.

"Fawkes?" Hobbes asked, unnecessarily. "What's goin' on?"

"Just drive, Hobbes." Fawkes' disembodied voice was a fierce whisper. "Let's get out of here."

Even in the safety of the Hummer, his partner didn't drop the Quicksilver. Taking the hint, Hobbes bit down on his tongue and his questions, and drove. Once past the traffic jam surrounding the emergency scene, they were able to move faster, but they had cleared at least five blocks before Fawkes let himself reappear. Even then, he remained slumped low enough in his seat that he would be effectively invisible from outside.

After a quick glance, Hobbes knew why. "You hurt?" he asked. Red streaks painted his partner's wrist, the front of his shirt, and the knees of his jeans.

"It's not my blood." Fawkes rubbed his eyes, then turned his attention to Hobbes. "No, really. It's Brown's."

"You turned off your phone, Fawkes, I had no idea what'd happened to you!" Hobbes glared at Fawkes. "You have any idea how worried...."

"You have any idea how glad I was to see you?" Fawkes interrupted, with a half-smile. "You try being inconspicuous in a crowd like that, for 45 minutes. I didn't think you'd appreciate it if I got myself picked up on suspicion of murder."

Hobbes whistled soundlessly. "Brown's dead?"

"Yeah." Fawkes kicked at the dashboard, moodily. "He didn't have time to tell me much, either."

Hobbes blew out an exasperated breath. "First Kelley down in San Diego, then Brown. Just disposed of once they'd been used. That's pretty damn cold."

"Please tell me you at least found Alvarez." Fawkes' pleading expression would have been amusing in just about any other context.

"Yeah, sorta. We got mosta the way to the wharves before I lost her." Hobbes shrugged. "I don't think she made me, but I got no idea if she was headed for her HQ, or just out driving."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure." After peering around to assure himself that they were far enough away, Fawkes pulled himself into a proper sitting position. "She just picked up the last installment of an order from Brown. Had to be heading for her base. Anything tall over there?"

Hobbes shrugged. "Sure, but nothin' showed up there during the second test."

"Wait a sec." Fawkes tapped his fingers on the armrest, eyes narrowed in thought. "When we were tracking the broadcasts, we only checked the area in and right around the city, right?"

"Yeah...." Hobbes frowned.

"So Brown mentioned something about Alcatraz." Darien went to comb his fingers through his hair, and stopped when he noticed dried blood still on them. "There's that old lighthouse out there, high enough to make a good broadcast location. And it's automated; nobody'll be there. Perfect base of operations, huh?"

"And you'd have to get a boat or ferry from the pier." Hobbes nodded slowly. "Could be." He suddenly grinned. "Looks like we'll be doin' a little B&E, my friend."

"Oh great," Darien whined. "Just what I always wanted to do--break into prison."

"I'm sorry, guys, the last tour of the day just ended. The ferry's making its trip back." The tanned surfer-type teen swept a hand out towards the water, and the setting sun.

"Great." Darien leaned on the counter of the information booth, and let the word out in a sigh.

Hobbes surveyed the expanse of docks and boats. "No night tours, huh?"

"No." The young man shook his head. "Nobody's allowed on Alcatraz island after dark. Security, you know."

"We're federal agents, bub." Hobbes, without even looking at the guy, whipped out and flashed his badge. "Come on, aren't there ever special trips?"

Darien watched the boy's mouth flap open and shut, for all the world like an annoyed goldfish. "Premium tours, yeah," the kid finally admitted. "At night, but they're not done often. And there's no way you'd get onto one even if it still had room. Not without paying through the nose."

Hobbes drew breath to protest, but Darien cut him off. "I guess that's something we should've looked into earlier. What about boat rentals? Who should we see about that?"

The kid jerked a thumb towards a neat little building further down the wharves. "You can try them. Not sure how long they stay open."

"Thanks, man, we appreciate it." Darien slapped the teen's hand, then grabbed Hobbes' elbow and steered him towards the boathouse.

"We gonna spend even more money, huh?" his partner asked pointedly.

"I bet it's cheaper than the tour. Anyway, this'll be a lot easier if we have our own transportation." Darien's long strides put him ahead, and he was the first to reach the solidly closed door of Bentley Boats. "Aw, crap."

"Closed?" Hobbes inspected the hours scrawled on a card and taped in the window. "At 7:30? It's going on eight, now."

Darien took a few steps back and looked up and down the docks. Dusk was falling, and most of the boats he could see were unmanned, the owners or renters having abandoned them for a drier evening on shore. "Hobbes, we've still got about two hours 'til the third test is supposed to start, right?" His partner nodded, and Darien went on, "Why don't you go see if you can find another rental place, or maybe commandeer us a boat. There's gotta be a woman out here somewhere who'd like to help out a couple of handsome federal agents."

Hobbes snorted, but Darien noted that he was already checking out the vicinity with a new eye. "And what're you gonna be doing, partner?"

"Looking into other options." Darien checked the air; it was damp, but any mist was still out over the water. Stepping into the lee of the rental office, he let Quicksilver flood over his body. "Give me a call if you get us a ride, or meet back here in 20?"

"You got it." Hobbes glanced around, chose a lighted boat a couple hundred yards off, and headed for it.

Darien stalked down towards the abandoned boats with the Bentley Boats logo on the side.

"Not sure this is a great idea, Fawkes," came the nearly soundless whisper of complaint. Hobbes was pretty good at stealth, and it was easy enough to walk in the shadows between lights on the way down the dock.

"Yeah? Well, far be it for me to commit a felony in the name of the law, but we're kinda running out of time." Darien slowed, looking around. "We're borrowing it. Commandeering it, just without prior permission."

"Stealing it." Hobbes sounded resigned.

"If you want, I can go back and put a note under their door," Darien said, exasperated. "'Took your boat for reasons of national security. Please call us to arrange payment.'"

"'Fish wouldn't back us up," Hobbes muttered.

Darien stopped, looked around once more, then swung himself into a small motorboat. "Nice of you to see reason," he teased, moving to the front. Darien switched on his flashlight, but kept the beam low, focused on the tiny wheel and instrument panel. "None of these boats had just plain rudders. Any idea how to hotwire this thing?"

Hobbes crouched next to him, reaching around to pry up the panel cover. Five minutes of whispered consultation later, the engine was running. Darien eased back to the stern. The steel cable that held the boat was fastened with an electronic lock. Darien wrapped the fingers of one Quicksilvered hand around the point where the cable met the lock. He counted to ten, letting the icy touch frost the metal, then pulled. The locking mechanism shattered, and Darien coiled the loose cable on the floor of the boat. "Let's do this." He settled into a seat at the stern.

Hobbes revved the engine and steered them out into open water.

Night had fallen completely. Out beyond the immediate range of the city's lights, faint stars speckled the dark sky.

"So where on the island we makin' for, Fawkes?" Hobbes yelled back to him, over the noise of the engine.

Darien sat up straighter, startled. "You going to tell me you spent a solid six months in this city and never went out to Alcatraz? Are we even headed in the right direction?"

"Duh, Fawkes." A pale shaft of light flashed past, above them, then again, and again. "A lighthouse is kinda hard to miss."

"OK, well, why don't we just try the dock? That's towards the far side of the island, the south-east corner." Darien rooted in the pockets of his jacket, glad he'd worn it. The wind on the water was bitingly cold. He pulled out a colorful tourist's map of Alcatraz and poured over it with his flashlight about an inch from the paper. "The lighthouse is pretty far south on the island, so head north of it."

Hobbes steered accordingly. After a few moments, he asked, "You've been out here before? Was that with Liz, too?"

"Yeah." Darien almost laughed--Liz had been quite the tyrant on that trip--but memories like that still raised the specter of his one-time mentor's recent death. "Nothing crazy--we just came out with a tour. Time to kill, and I think it was supposed to be some kind of object lesson."

"Crime gets you locked up on an island?"

Darien snorted. "Just some subtle motivation not to get caught." He hunched in on himself against the cold and damp.

Closer to the island, where the lighthouse's beam reflected back flashes of a rocky shoreline, Darien squinted, then stood up cautiously for a better look.

Steady lights glowed at the dock, illuminating at least.... "What is that, four, five boats?" Hobbes asked. "I bet that's the security the surfer dude was going on about."

"Yeah." Darien bit his lower lip, thinking. "There's a path up from the south side, I think." He sat down to consult the tiny map. "That's probably a better bet than landing among a bunch of lights and people."

"Might be useful to know they're here, though," Hobbes commented, turning the boat to follow what they could see of the shoreline, while they were still a few hundred yards out. "Back-up, in case Alvarez has minions."

"Of course she will," Darien agreed. "What's the point in being evil unless you have devoted underlings like Dante to do your every bidding?"

He leaned forward to keep a wary eye on the rocks; the ocean swished and crashed ominously against them. "You ever hear how Frank Morris and the Amblin brothers escaped from Alcatraz?" Darien craned his neck, trying to see in the dark. "They made a raft out of prison raincoats, inflated them, and floated away with the tide."

"Tall tale." Hobbes dismissed the legend. "At least, they didn't make it to shore. Drowned."

"Hey." Darien grinned. "Someone on TV, those, uh, Mythbuster guys, did an experiment. It could've worked. They never found the bodies, y'know."

"Doesn't mean they made it."

"Doesn't mean they didn't." Darien checked the map again. "We should be there."

"Always takes longer if it's your first time going somewhere," Hobbes observed. He reached up and adjusted the spotlight to flare more brightly along the shore, reflecting from patches of mist.

"Whoa, they might see that." Darien reached for the light.

Hobbes grabbed his partner's wrist. "Nah, they're all up at the prison complex or around the bend. And it's this or death-on-the-rocks, my friend."

Darien subsided. Hobbes, muttering to himself (or maybe to the boat, Darien couldn't tell), maneuvered along the shoreline until the light picked out a strip of grey against the darker stone and vegetation. Then he nudged the boat in, until it bumped up against a low steel dock.

Hobbes killed the engine, then ran his hand along the metal edge 'til he found a mooring cleat and tied the boat off. He switched off the last lights and clambered out onto the island. Darien waited a few moments, letting his eyes adjust to the deeper darkness, and listening to the muted crashing of water and moaning of wind. The lighthouse beam flashed overhead, once, again, a sharp counterpoint to the faint ambient light cast by the city largely hidden by the black bulk of the island.

Darien clicked his flashlight back on, and stepped cautiously out onto the dock. Hobbes joined him, taking a moment to adjust his jacket and holster, and to check his gun. "She's got at least an hour and a half head start on us," he observed. "She's gotta be up at the lighthouse already."

"So we catch up." Darien turned the beam of his light onto the cleared path, which headed up the steep slope to their right. At the top of the hill, like a dark cutout against the stars, Alcatraz prison loomed. "It's what, twenty past nine? We've still got an hour before the test starts."

Darien followed his partner up the path, picking their way between plants that crept out to trip the unwary. The ascent was steep, but gradual; not threatening to tip them backwards down the hill...as long as they watched where they put their feet. In terms of sheer physical exertion, this was definitely the toughest thing Darien had tried since his little near-death experience the month before.

Each step made him breathe harder, and the muscles in his legs cramped slightly as he continued half-climbing up the stony slope. It felt great. Darien started taking bigger steps, long strides that required him to pull himself up the hill with only the support of his muscles. Tension he hadn't even recognized started to ease out of his body.

The path took them around and beneath the lighthouse, and brought them up to the north of it. To their right, another path stretched down towards the rest of the island, and the light of the dock at the southeast corner. To their left, a walled courtyard led up to a mildly imposing building. "That's the Warden's House," Darien whispered to Hobbes. Standing just behind that building was the pointed, flashing spire of the lighthouse.

In silent agreement, the two agents turned left and slipped into the courtyard. Hobbes stiffened, then flattened his partner into the shadow of the wall. The wind dropped, and the noise that Darien had mistaken for waves resolved itself into the murmur of a small crowd, strolling out of the Warden's House behind their tour guide. Some of the tourists had flashlights, others.... "Are those actual torches?" Darien asked, incredulous.

"No way; think of the fire hazard." Hobbes shook his head. "Can't get past them."

Sure we could, Darien thought; but it might be wise not to try. "Lighthouse isn't attached to the Warden's House at all," he breathed, instead. "It's standing out there by itself. We can get to it from the outside."

Hobbes nodded, still watching the tourists with care. Then he stepped backwards slowly. Darien followed, using the wall as his guide.

Once they were out of the courtyard, Darien switched his flashlight back on and led the way. Signs materialized out of the dimness, prohibiting the general public from using this route. "Don't worry, I've been over here once before. I kinda wandered away during that tour," he told Hobbes, smirking at the recollection. "Liz was furious... but I got to see stuff that nobody else did."

"Like the lighthouse?" Hobbes was only half listening; the rest of his attention was fixed on their surroundings. Enough light made it across the water and through the rising fog to make him antsy. Anyone looking could see them, creeping along the wall like ants.

"Yeah, I didn't manage to get inside, though." Darien slowed, sweeping the ground ahead with his light. The black wall of the Warden's House ended, and maybe 50 feet beyond it, built right on the cliff's edge, the lighthouse towered. Darien moved to continue--and Hobbes grabbed him.

"Shh!" Hobbes had put out his light, and Darien followed suit. A spot of light danced through thick shadows towards the base of the lighthouse. A click, a creak, and a faint line showed the outline of a door on its north side. A moment later, it closed, and Darien made a beeline for the area, tripping over a couple of rocks along the way as he failed to watch his feet.

"Fawkes!" Hobbes hissed, running to keep up. "Don't alert 'em! That coulda been one a' Alvarez's goons."

"No kidding." Darien slowed, and sidled up to the door, blank steel set in a concrete frame. "Here, hold this." He handed back his flashlight and reached into his back pocket for the ever-present lockpicks. The beam had wandered; Darien stuck his hand into the light and beckoned it back towards the lock. "Over here, Hobbes." A few moments of tinkering brought a satisfactory click, but the door didn't budge when Darien tried the handle.

"Bolt." Hobbes pointed out the flush surface of a deadbolt lock higher up the door. Darien reached it easily, but it stuck. Several breaths later, a final twist heaved the bolt back.

Both partners waited, listening. Finally, Darien glanced up at Hobbes. "Hope it's not booby-trapped." He pushed down the handle and eased the door open. It gave onto a bare concrete room, and a staircase spiraling upward in the center, lit only by a naked bulb from somewhere above. Darien turned to his partner in assumed concern. "OK. For headquarters on Alcatraz, that was way too easy. Their security officially sucks," he whispered.

Hobbes snorted, but drew his gun and sidled past Darien to take point. "You better hope it does. Don't underestimate these guys," he whispered back.

"Believe me, buddy, I don't." Darien took one last glance into the shadows outside, remembering a pair of smashed Ray Bans. Then he followed Hobbes up the staircase, cautious and stopping often to listen, or to flood dark corners with a flashlight beam. The further up they got without any trace of a possible ambush, the twitchier Hobbes became.

"This just ain't right," he muttered. "Chick's been a model of caution, an' now she just leaves her HQ unguarded? That's not even gutsy. It's suicidal." They kept climbing, and Darien's breath came a little harder.

The sound of an indistinct female voice reached Darien and Hobbes before they rounded the last curve of the stairs. Darien slumped against the wall in relief, while Hobbes felt his way up a few more steps. He stopped just short of being visible through the partially open door with a tarnished brass "Maintenance" plaque hanging askew.

Darien peered through the door, trying to make sense of the shapes and colors he could see. Someone was definitely moving about inside, and he caught a glimpse of what might have been a computer monitor.

But it was the voice that got to him. A woman's, low, with a hint of Spanish accent. The words made no sense, until Darien recognized the cadence of her speech as that of quotation. Quoting poetry is like singing in the shower--as long as the fit lasts, one is more concerned about speaking the words than about their practical consequences.

And it was definitely Alvarez's voice. "...'and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.'" That should have ended with a question mark, but she punctuated it like a statement, with a tiny, triumphant laugh.

"Come," she crooned, "come, Chaos and Old Night. Making this moment your own, you restore us to ourselves. What was before shall be again, as order falls to the collision of deep waters."

OK, she's insane, Darien thought, but the chill that raised the hairs on the back of his neck couldn't be wholly explained by just that idea.

Hobbes, his flashlight pointed down the stairwell to keep it undetected, looked completely puzzled. After a moment, he set down the flashlight, then crept up the last few steps 'til he stood with his back against the wall, flush with the doorway. Then he beckoned, pointing Darien to the opposite side.

Darien let Quicksilver slide over him, and moved quickly past the open door. Instead of flattening his invisible body against the wall, he stopped to get a good look into the room. Under industrial fluorescent lamps, scattered stacks of boxes huddled in corners. Atop a row of these boxes sat a complicated array of electronic equipment.

Alvarez was kneeling in front of the array, fiddling with a set of dials connected to a digital readout.

Darien stepped back into the shelter of the wall and let the Quicksilver fall away. Hobbes held up a hand, waiting 'til Darien nodded acknowledgment before he counted down from three on his fingers.

"Freeze! Federal agents!" Hobbes slammed the door wide open as he crashed into the room, gun sights trained between Alvarez's shoulder blades. She certainly froze--with both hands out of sight. "Hands on your head, lady!" Hobbes moved closer. "Now! Get 'em up!"

Slowly, but without hesitation, Alvarez brought both empty hands up and wrapped them around the back of her head. Hobbes took another couple steps and grabbed one upraised wrist. He kept the gun poking right into her spine. "Fawkes?"

Darien finally had enough room to enter without getting in his partner's sights. "Hey, look what we caught." Hobbes pulled Alvarez to her feet, hands still on her head. Darien patted her down thoroughly, paying special attention to her denim jacket and boots. He pulled a tiny revolver out of her jacket pocket, and an assortment of small tools from her belt. "No knife," Darien pointed out to his partner.

"Ah, she probably ditched it." Hobbes pulled Alvarez's hand down behind her and slapped the first ring of handcuffs on it.

She hadn't said a word until then. "And why am I being arrested?" she inquired calmly.

Hobbes yanked down her other wrist and snapped the cuff around it.

"You're Jolene Alvarez." Darien supposed that should be a query, but he was certain. She was unmistakably the woman in the photos Hobbes had shown him; ragged dark hair, angular brows, and stocky shoulders. Not to mention the voice. "You work with international terrorist Javier. That's why. Not to mention that this area is strictly off-limits to tourists."

Alvarez smiled, but didn't respond.

Hobbes shoved her at Darien. "Keep an eye on her, partner. I gotta check this place out."

Darien caught her by the cuffed arms, and pulled her away from her equipment. She moved with him easily, quietly. He expected her to be tense in his grip. Instead, Alvarez stood in something resembling parade rest, apparently completely relaxed.

Hobbes started clearing the room, prying into every nook and shadow that could possibly have held a minion or a booby trap.

Darien let his own gaze wander to the equipment. One or two of the components... "Hobbes, this looks like the setup they've got going in the test center at Sutro."

"We were right, then." Hobbes put on an exaggerated expression of surprise. "Ms. Alvarez, I don't supposed you'd like to help us out, here? Tell me the quickest way to disable this thing?" He strolled over to the array and began poking at various wires and cables.

Alvarez was silent, then said softly, "Chaos isn't so easily defeated as that, agent. You really ought to know that by now."

Hobbes exchanged a look with his partner; Darien shrugged.

Alvarez turned her head and smiled. "Fawkes." It was the tone she might have used to greet a colleague. "I really thought, after last time, you might prove to be on our side. A windfall."

Darien's thoughts spun around a few times before realizing what she'd meant. A reference to his undercover work in one of Javier's groups. "How'd you know about me, anyway?" he asked the terrorist. "There weren't any girls on our team, and almost everyone got themselves killed or caught. Chaos works both ways, you know."

The woman actually laughed, a throaty chuckle. "I do know. After you proved to be so open to it, we imagined that you might be a strange attractor."

"What?" Darien knew he shouldn't encourage her, but the phrase sounded vaguely familiar.

Hobbes didn't even look up from his inspection. "He definitely attracts the strange ones." He ripped out a wire, and sparks crackled briefly.

"Ha, ha." Darien's response was automatic.

"I think I may have to drop that hypothesis." Alvarez sounded truly regretful. "This time, you didn't catch on." She sighed deeply, drooping a little in Darien's grip. "Such a disappointment."

Hobbes snorted.

"You're not so great yourself," Darien told her, tightening his grip a little at the memory of blood on concrete. "We caught you. And what was that bastardization of Shakespeare and Milton you were making up back there?"

"You are wasted as an agent." Alvarez twisted her head far enough around to meet his gaze. "All that free-associative talent locked up in rules and regulations. Ever think about getting out?"

What the hell was this? If she was trying to unsettle him, Darien decided, it was working. "What rules?" he said, as lightly as he could. "It's not like I work for the FBI."

"'Chaos is creativity.'" Alvarez's voice had slid back into quotation mode. "'One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.'"

"Nietzsche." Darien frowned at her. In the background, Hobbes was now rapidly unhooking cables. "He also said that the best man is one who has 'organized the chaos of his passions and become creative.'"

Alvarez dropped her tone to a whisper. "Oh, but unless you return to chaos, and do not deny it, there is no way to reach that creativity."

"Fawkes," Hobbes called, from his crouch on the floor behind the row of boxes. "What's she tellin' you?"

"Nothing useful," Darien said dryly.

Hobbes surfaced, looking concerned. Darien shook his head. "Alright, partner," Hobbes muttered. Then he raised his voice. "I'm gonna cut power to this stuff. Better hope you didn't booby-trap it, Alvarez. Boom."

She smirked at him.

Hobbes gave a tug, and all the lights on the array of equipment winked out. After a long moment in which absolutely nothing happened, he circled back around the boxes. Stopping about six inches from Alvarez, Hobbes grabbed her chin and jerked it up so he could meet her eyes. "You know somethin' you ain't lettin' on?" he asked.

"Many things," Alvarez agreed placidly. She met his stare unblinking.

"Like where the resta your team is?" That, she did not deign to answer. Finally, Hobbes released her, taking a side step and reaching for her cuffed wrists. "Let's get outta here. Fawkes, take point, alright? We don't wanna run right into those tourists."

"Bobby, I can handle her." Darien kept one hand on her arm.

"I know," Hobbes said. "Humor me, huh?"

Darien could feel Alvarez's dark eyes boring right into the back of his neck during the entire trip down the lighthouse staircase. Hobbes kept up a running line of questioning all the way down, in a curt whisper that echoed back from the concrete walls.

Alvarez didn't say a word.

At the foot of the lighthouse, they paused to get their bearings, and to catch their breath. Darien pointed his flashlight towards the back wall of the Warden's House, swept it left towards the wall of the prison itself, and then left into the open space that fell quickly into a rocky cliff. Somewhere past that was the invisible bay water, and the blazing lights of the mainland.

A voice echoed from behind walls. "I think the tourists are still checking out the Warden's House," Darien said. "We're probably clear."

"I'm not taking her down that path," Hobbes said. Then he turned his attention to their prisoner. "We're gonna go find your boat down at the dock." He pushed her forward.

Apparently amused, Alvarez stood fast. "You really think you've won this time." She sounded half-incredulous. "You are a depressingly uptight little man."

Hobbes jerked her arm again, and she went along obediently enough. Darien had to repress a snicker. Alvarez certainly had Bobby's number.

They were most of the way back to the opening of the courtyard, and the tourist voices were still muffled, when Hobbes shoved Alvarez at Darien. "Here. I got a call to make."

"Wondered when you'd get around to that. Give Jones my love, OK?" Darien caught Alvarez and steered her towards the path once more, pointing the way with his flashlight. Hobbes pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open.

"I wouldn't do that," Alvarez said.

Hobbes chuckled. "You can't be in more trouble than you already are. Anyway, I'm just clearin' up a bet with a...friend." He found the number in his address book--

"I wouldn't," Alvarez said again.

--and hit SEND.

In mid-step, Darien stumbled. There was a flash and a muffled boom from high above and behind, and instantly everything was black. No lights from the dock far off, no flashlight beam reflecting back onto their feet, no sweep of the lighthouse lamp overhead.

There was a suddenly clear chorus of screams and shouts from the tourist group on the other side of the wall. Darien stood still, trying to get his bearings, and felt Alvarez lurch to the side and tear herself out of his grip. He jolted forward, dropping his useless flashlight, and grabbed for her. The hard back of her head smashed into his cheekbone. For a moment they struggled, then her foot found his instep and Darien's grip loosened. She pivoted, and swung a foot into the side of his knee.

"Ow!" Darien bent, bracing himself on his good leg to keep from falling right over. Alvarez bolted, fleeing away in the dark and with her hands cuffed. Footsteps were already fading.

"Fawkes!" Hobbes was right next to him, a hand shaking his shoulder. "You alright?"

Darien sucked in another lungful of air around the pain, which was passing. "Yeah. Alvarez just took off, but I'm OK. What just happened?"

"That explosion?" Hobbes' disembodied voice was grim. "My cell's not working. Or my watch. Or any lights. What d'you think--an EMP bomb like the one Javier tried to use in San Diego?"

Darien jerked his head up, blindly searching for the city on the mainland. He remembered vividly Claire's description of the mayhem and death that could ensue when all electronic systems died simultaneously.

There, through the tatters of fog over the water, the lights of San Francisco still shone. "Must not have been a very big bomb," Darien offered. He flexed his knee. Sore, but definitely usable. "Alvarez was sure ready for that. Think she'll head for the dock or just go to ground somewhere on the island?"

"Dunno." Hobbes' voice was distant; he absently patted Darien's shoulder, as if to make sure his partner was still within reach.

"Oh, man, I bet most of the boats got wiped out too." Darien straightened cautiously. "Why set off an EMP bomb on just the island? I mean, it wouldn't affect the test either way, but at least in the city Javier would get his crazy chaos effect multiplied."

He heard Hobbes stamp angrily. "Dammit to hell. Can't believe I fell for that again."

"What, Bobby?" Darien reached down, feeling around for his discarded flashlight. It clicked dully. The darkness remained.

Hobbes swore a few more times for good measure, then sighed in disgust. "Last time we ran into this group, Monroe and I did some good work. Followed the intel, figured out the plan. It was damn good decoy. And pure good luck Dante decided to trust you, so we had someone there to stop him from settin' off the real bomb."

Darien had been trying not to think about those five minutes of terror, racing for the ocean in a car holding mass destruction in its trunk. "Yeah...."

"So, same M.O. Make this place tough to find, but lay clues out there. Lure in whoever was smart enough to figure it out. Trap us here--"

"--and head back to the mainland to finish the job?" Darien blew out a long breath. "Can we even get from here to the boats without falling down a cliff somewhere? 'Cause there's no way Jones figured even this much out, and we've got no way to warn him."

"Yeah." Hobbes shifted noisily. "So which way's the wall, and which way's the cliff?"

"Follow the voices," Darien suggested. The screams had died down, but there was still some shouting and crying going on to their left. Darien found his partner's shoulder and steered him in that direction. The rough wall, when it scraped his palms, was a welcome anchor in the dark.

In the dark... Idiot, Darien scolded himself. Just 'cause it's dark to normal people... He Quicksilvered his eyes, the thin film shielding them from the cold ocean wind. He blinked, careful to keep the flow steady, and looked around.

The entire island, the ground, the wall he leaned against, shimmered with a pattern like an oil slick. It was fading, and compared to, say, the thermal glow that outlined Hobbes, it wasn't bright to begin with. I wonder if this is what an EMP pulse does to the rest of the invisible spectrum? Nothing was as clear as other times when he'd used Quicksilver vision, even at night, but it was far better than nothing.

"C'mon," Hobbes said, oblivious to the experiment going on right next him. "That tour guide might have a light." He turned, brighter silver hand against the muddled shadow that was the courtyard wall, guiding himself towards the path and the entrance. Darien followed.

He nearly ran into Hobbes as the older man stopped abruptly. Beyond him yawned the blank hole of the entrance, and beyond that, other silvery shapes, some walking around, some huddled together. "Hey, don't worry. Gary'll be right back with that lantern. Just stay put so we don't lose anyone, and everything will be fine." That had to be the tour guide.

Darien blinked the Quicksilver out of his eyes. Yep, the guide had a glow stick, shedding faint green light around his hand. That was it, though, no candles or anything.

"What happened?" a man asked.

"I don't know." The tour guide raised his voice slightly. "I'm sure the Coast Guard will come check it out as soon as they notice the lighthouse has gone out. We'll be back on the mainland in no time."

Hobbes pressed Darien backwards. "I'm not waitin' for the frickin' Coast Guard," he bit out. "Test's about to start. We gotta get down to the dock."

"OK, Bobby." Darien moved as if he was ready to start walking. "Doesn't look like they've got anything useful--let's just go."

"Can't get there if we can't see where we're going," Hobbes objected, giving Darien a little shake.

"Yeah, but I can see in the dark, Hobbes." Darien tried to keep the satisfaction out of his voice.

His partner's silence was skepticism enough. Darien sighed, clapped a hand onto Hobbes' balding head, and let the Quicksilver run down his hand onto Bobby's face. "Fawkes...."

"Open your eyes, Bobby, all right?" Darien let his own Quicksilver vision return, in shades of gray, and noted the moment when his partner caught on, head jerking from side to side as he took in the tangled view.

After a few long moments, Hobbes muttered, "That's weird, Fawkes. Kinda like black an' white night vision goggles."

"Yeah," Darien agreed. "Pretty cool, ya gotta admit. Think we could find the dock like this?"

Hobbes pondered that. "Sure," he finally said. "But I'm not goin' down that cliff path without proper light."

"Our boat's a goner anyway," Darien reminded him.

"OK." Hobbes sighed, then started walking. Darien stepped out with him, keeping his left hand on his partner's head. Bobby put up with this for about 30 seconds, long enough for them to begin moving out of hearing range of the tourists. "Fawkes, cut that out."

"You want to be blind again?" Darien asked. "Either we stop every time you blink, or I keep at least one finger touching you." He lifted his hand, except for his index finger.

Hobbes snorted. "Fine."

They'd found the path heading down from the prison to the rest of the island, and towards the space where they had, on arrival, noted the lights of the dock. This business of walking in tandem, not to mention doing it over rough ground with limited vision, was turning out to be a challenge.

So when Darien stopped in his tracks, he wasn't surprised at Hobbes' annoyed reaction. "Whatcha doin' now, Fawkes?"

Darien waved a hand in the general direction of the mainland. The myriad lights of the city were getting dimmer by the minute, as fog rolled in from the ocean. But in the thickening shadow, Darien counted three needles of light piercing upwards. "You see that?"

"See what...? Oh." The shape that was Hobbes leaned forward, as if that would help him see more clearly.

"You said the test probably started a couple minutes ago." Darien counted the needles again; yes, three. As he watched, the light from each of them flared. "We might have a problem. This broadcast location was a decoy...but those are just the Federal test sites, right? So Alvarez and Company have to be at one of those sites."

"Security's tight, remember?" Hobbes objected. "How they gonna get access?"

One of the needles was brighter than the other two. "They don't have to be in the test site, just at the same location," Darien said slowly. Hobbes looked at him.

They turned and started moving at the same moment.

The rising fog was thicker at the water level, though Darien found that it didn't impede what Quicksilver vision he had as much as it would have normal vision. His footsteps thumped hollow on the dock. "Bobby, you stay here, all right? I'll go take a peek at the boats."

"No way," Hobbes said at once. "Not all that trippin' and fallin' while we were climbin' down here was my fault. Don't want you goin' in the drink, my friend."

Darien grinned to himself. "I'll be careful. I just don't want to accidentally push you in."

"Nobody'd believe it was an accident," Hobbes grumbled good-naturedly, but he stood where he was, Quicksilver flaking off his face.

Darien turned to stroll down the dock. He counted four boats as he walked, then turned around and hopped aboard each one in turn. "Not much here," he called to Hobbes from the last boat. "These three are totally computerized, they'll be dead in the water. I want you to come look at the last one. I don't know how these work, maybe you can figure out if it's still intact." Darien wandered back to his partner, handing Hobbes the pack of paper matches he'd found in the wheel room of the largest boat.

Hobbes struck a match, and the flame flickered colorless in Darien's Quicksilver vision, then withered in the damp air.

"Good," Darien said firmly. "I'm getting tired of dispensing Quicksilver." He was tired and hungry, but there was no time now to think about that. He let Hobbes grip his upper arm and led him to the plain motorboat moored furthest down the dock.

A few minutes and half a pack of matches later, Hobbes reached for the engine cord. "Here goes nothin'." He pulled. The engine roared to life. "Alright!"

Darien bounced impatiently into the tiny forward seat. "Let's go, let's go, Alvarez probably has a huge head start on us."

Hobbes steered the boat away from the dock as well as he could, then turned it to face the ever-dimming lights of the mainland. "Hang onto your hair, my friend." He let the engine run.

Salt spray kicked up into Darien's face. He kept his gaze on those brilliant little needles of light.

The Biblical creation story begins when "the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." I'd never really thought about what that might have been like, until Hobbes and I were skimming across San Francisco Bay in the middle of the night, in the fog, without even running lights on board. Hobbes used up his matches pretty quick trying to keep us on course.

I'm not sure how that Coast Guard cutter managed to spot us, rather than running us down in the dark. At that point, though, we would've taken a lift from Jones.

Not that they knew I was there.

FBI agent Jones paced tensely across the wooden wharf near the docked ferries, cell phone plastered to his ear. "Yes, captain, I am absolutely certain. If one of your cutters can give us a lift, we'll be more than happy to help investigate what happened out there. The sooner the better." He frowned as the Coast Guard captain added something. "What? You picked up a federal agent running without lights...?" Jones gritted his teeth as realization dawned. "Yeah, I want to talk to him. Thank you, captain."

Agent Hutchins was waiting as he flipped the cell closed. "Jones, you were right," she said. "The Hummer's in the next lot down."

"You sure it's the right one?"

Hutchins grinned. "That bio-bug you got from the Meyer tech boys led us right to it. It's definitely theirs."

"I knew it." Through swirls of mist, Jones spotted lights headed for the pier. "Assign a couple agents to watch the Hummer, and then round up the rest of the team. We're heading out to Alcatraz with the Coast Guard."

"Sounds like fun." Hutchins headed for a small knot of agents conferring closer to shore.

A short figure leaped out of the Coast Guard boat that had just docked, and came stomping along the dock. "Jones!"

Jones crossed his arms. "Look what the cat dragged in. Want to tell me what happened out there, Bob?" He looked around, but the second half of the comedy team was nowhere to be seen. Not that that meant anything. "And where's Fawkes?"

"Aheada you." The balding agent glared at him. "What happened out there? Short version? Alvarez, a decoy base, an EMP bomb, she got away. We're pretty sure their real base is at Sutro Tower."

Jones' eyebrows went up. "You're crazy, Hobbes," he said. "I just heard from the team there, and that site is fully secure. The testing is proceeding perfectly."

"Oh, I'm crazy, huh?"

Darien tapped on the glass between himself and the driver of the cab he'd found after realizing that the Hummer was under guard.

"Yeah?" The driver, an older Caucasian man with a fringe of orange hair, slid the barrier open a crack. He clearly didn't trust this damp and dirty punk.

"You got a cell phone I could borrow? Mine's broken." Darien kept his hands low and tried to look non-threatening. Hobbes probably would have had his gun out by now.

"Nope." The guy kept driving.

At least they were getting somewhere. Darien got out his badge and flattened it up against the glass. "Look, this is a matter of national security. And no, I'm not joking."

As they stopped at a red light, the driver turned to get a good look, then made a sharp right turn. "No phone, that's company policy. But there's a pay phone right here. I'll wait."

"Thanks, man, that's fine." Darien slapped the glass, then swung the door open as the cab rolled into a deserted cafe's parking lot. The fog had dropped lower in this part of the city, scattering the fluorescent glow of the streetlights. Darien fumbled for change, and dialed as quickly as he could.

"Jones." The word was snapped out.

"Hey, my man, how's it hangin'?" Darien asked cheekily.

"Fawkes. I have a situation here, I don't have time for your wild goose chase, or your partner's paranoid delusions."

Darien leaned back against the phone booth. "This is neither, so listen for once."

"No," Jones said fiercely, "you listen. As I keep telling your partner, Sutro is fully secure. End of story."

"Yeah, your facility at the Tower is just fine, I'm sure." Darien tried to run his fingers through hair dripping with damp and stiff with salt, then gave up in disgust. "What about the tower itself?"

"It's an open-structure broadcast tower." Jones adopted a tone more suited to instructing a five-year-old than a fellow agent. "Nothing but a bunch of steel rods and wires. There's no room for broadcast interference equipment, and trust me, a bomb we would notice."

Darien flexed his fingers on the receiver, instead of punching the phone. "That's why they're using it. You think it's safe: it becomes an excellent target. QED."

"Get off this line, Fawkes. I'm trying to coordinate with the Coast Guard, here." Jones was trying to change the subject.

Oh, no, not yet, you little creep. Darien tried a different tack. "Did you hear from the other test sites yet?"

"Goodbye, Fawkes. Keep your nose out of this. We know what we're doing."

Darien stared at the receiver, which suddenly buzzed with the dial tone. "You won't go?" he said to the air. "Fine. I will." He slammed the phone back onto its hook, and headed for the cab. "Quickest route you've got to Sutro Tower, please."

I have never--at least not recently--lied to one of our FBI brothers. So you can imagine how annoying it was for me to walk up, identify myself, explain the situation, and be treated like the boy who cried "wolf."

Jones hadn't been joking about the security measures, but fortunately, they hadn't been designed with Quicksilver in mind. Darien had to move quickly when he crossed paths with patrolling agents, to keep the thickening fog from turning to ice around him, but that went all right. So did the bit of pickpocket work, lifting a mini-Maglite from the belt of a nearby cop.

The actual ascent of the base was tough. Darien looked around for a ladder or other access, but most had to be inside. Finally, he located what seemed to be a maintenance ladder, metal rungs set into the wall of concrete that based one of the pylons of the tower. And guarded. All right, then.

A noise several yards off lured the guards far enough from their posts that he could reach for the first rung, pull himself up, and get far enough above their heads that not only could he drop the Quicksilver, but they could no longer hear him. After that, Darien climbed as swiftly as he dared. Time was trickling away.

Up on top of the base, Darien snatched a few moments to rest. Blowing on his numbing hands, he moved cautiously about, trying to find the best place to start up the structure.

In the Meyer Technologies room at the base of Sutro Tower, Dr. Aubrey Leon sat at the main computer console, overseeing the networking of the new system. "One hour mark," he called out. "Reports, please."

A scattered chorus of "fine," "decent," "network links solid," surrounded him.

"Okay. We're going independent." Leon reached for the speaker that connected him to the other two test locations. "We're a go, people. Fly free."

There was a flurry of activity, checks, and counterchecks, some nervous whispering. This would be the validation of their work, proof that a secure communication system was actually possible.

Into the expectant silence that followed, once unselfconsciously horrified voice broke. "Holy Mary, mother of..."

Leon frowned at his top practical researcher. "Vartann, what is it?"

The dark-haired man was bent toward his screen, eyes rapidly scanning data. "This signal, this isn't right, it's damaged or.... I don't know, Doc. Going out it looks all right, but what we're getting back is not a confirmation signal." He swallowed convulsively. "It almost looks like--"

The phone at Leon's elbow rang. He hit the speaker button, more out of habit than thought. "Doctor Leon."

The masculine voice was calm, even pleasant, but totally unfamiliar. "Doctor. My name is Javier, and I have appropriated the beautifully impervious network you and your colleagues spent so much precious time on."

"What?" Leon felt his mouth go dry. After all their precautions, surely this was impossible. "Prove it."

Now the voice sounded amused. "Ah, the scientific mind. Very well. Watch the first link in your chain of dedicated military satellites."

Leon glanced across the room to meet the gaze of a young, gangly woman in a lab coat, who turned back to her console. A few minutes went by, as she checked, and rechecked. Finally she cursed, loudly and unprofessionally, and turned a despairing face to her supervisor. "The first relay isn't responding to controls," she rattled off, the speed of her voice giving away the panic she was trying to keep under wraps. "Either its password system has been altered, or …or the signal itself has been overridden."

"You see?" Javier said over the speaker.

Leon beckoned to the young woman, and handed her a piece of paper. She read it, then nodded, and headed for the power controls behind the largest bank of computers.

"Now," Javier continued, "I want to speak to the agent in charge."

The young woman hit the failsafe switch, to kill the power. A surge of electricity shot up through her hands, and she cried out. A couple of nearby techs knocked her away from the switch and pulled her to one side.

"I wouldn't try that again." All ease had left Javier's voice. "Now, the agent in charge."

Darien had no idea how high up he was when he started desperately wishing he'd worn gloves. The steel framework of the tower was slick with condensation, and cold enough that his hands were getting clumsy. The fog was so thick that he could barely see. He didn't dare use the flashlight he'd swiped, not while he had no idea where his enemy was, so he wouldn't have been able to see at all if not for the laser-like play of light above him, spilling up from the top of the tower.

He froze, one foot in the air. Was that the wind - or a voice? There it was again. Cautiously, Darien felt his way several feet higher. One hand brushed against something bulky, and he slid his left hand along the sides of a box-like item, bolted to the structure. Cables trailed off the near end, and Darien continued climbing, paying more attention to his right, where the cables seemed to be heading.

He'd finally reached something he recognized--the barred shadows in the fog above his head had to be the catwalk near the top of tower--when he heard the voice again. It sounded clearer this time, still above him, and maybe halfway to the next pier of the tower.

"Yes, you heard me correctly. Those prisoners must be free three hours from now, or I will be forced to drop one or two of your local communications satellites out of orbit. Ask your technicians if you think I can't do it." Oh, that was definitely Alvarez. With a kind of echo to her voice, which Darien put down to the fog. "And if that doesn't work, you can't stop me from blowing the entire system from the inside out. Every satellite currently in orbit will either be destroyed outright, or cut off from ground contact indefinitely."

Darien used the noise of her conversation to mask the sound as he climbed a few more feet, and felt for handholds that would let him edge further inside the structure. A gust of wind thinned the fog just enough to show him two silhouettes above him, one perched over an array of electronic equipment... the real counterpart of the Alcatraz decoy, and Alvarez, braced against a girder, mobile phone in one hand, the other holding a small box between her lips and the mouthpiece of the phone.

"Good. I'll be in touch." That same echo followed her voice, again. What was that? Something to distort her voice? Darien shifted again, trying for a better view without climbing up onto the catwalk itself.

"I'm tellin' you, Jones, they're at Sutro. You. Screwed. Up." Hobbes poked a finger at the other agent, punctuating the words.

"Get away from me, or I'll have you arrested for obstruction!" Jones hissed the warning, then walked a few deliberate feet away, to continue his phone conversation with the Coast Guard. "You're sure there's just the tourists? What about in the lighthouse?" He broke off, glanced at his phone's brilliant blue display, and continued, "I'll get right back to you, I've got to take this call. Thank you."

Hobbes paced back and forth, never further than three feet away. Every instinct he had was standing up and screaming that they were in trouble--specifically, that Fawkes was in trouble. They hadn't had much time to come up with a plan that would keep one of them on Alvarez while still convincing Jones and the rest of the Fibbies of what was going down, but plan or no plan, Hobbes was starting to think that it had been a mistake to send his partner off on his own.

"What?!" Jones looked startled, pale eyes bugging wide in the misty light. "Don't do anything! We'll be there ASAP." He snapped the phone closed, and shouted to the cluster of agents further down the dock. "Back to base, people, we've got a situation." Then he turned, grabbed Hobbes, and headed for his sleek Fibbie car.

"What happened?" Hobbes shook the agent's clammy hand off his wrist, but kept pace with him. It was a tough battle, to not smirk at this turn of events, but he managed it somehow.

"Alcatraz wasn't just a decoy, it was a damned good distraction." Jones unlocked the car and swung into the driver's seat. "Get in the car, Hobbes."

Hobbes climbed into the passenger's side, swearing he wouldn't say it. OK. It was a losing battle. "Told you," he said under his breath.

Clinging silently from his handhold a mere yard below the terrorists' precarious headquarters, Darien shamelessly eavesdropped.

Alvarez and her cohort were deep in consultation. Both of them crouched in front of a dimly lit computer display. Darien cursed the fog, which--in spite of the breeze that had picked up during his climb--was still obscuring his view. He debated trying to get even closer while they were occupied, but gave up that idea when he heard the cohort's voice clearly for the first time.

"The primary programs are in place." The cool, barely accented tones were familiar. The man bowing and scraping to Alvarez had once been Javier's second-in-command, and Darien's fellow prisoner.

Instead of moving upwards, Darien shifted slightly and tried to get a sense of the layout above him. That was a computer or something; there were three different displays, another boxy computer thing, and a mess of cables linking each component to the others. What could he do with those? Get close enough, then smash something? That might not be enough.

Darien's fingers slipped on the icy rung he was holding. He clung tighter, and looked again. Something trailed off to his left. Down the side of the tower that he had climbed. Which meant....

Grinning, Darien shifted his grip and reached for another bar. Those were cables, the same cables he had followed from the box bolted to the side of the tower. No wonder there hadn't been any kind of power drain reported. These guys were smart: they'd brought their own mini-generator.

But not smart enough. Hand over hand and foot by foot, Darien eased back towards the north side of the pylon. If he could reach those cables... Alvarez and Dante continued their little conference, and everything was going well, until the sole of Darien's shoe squeaked slightly.

"Did you hear something?" Alvarez asked. Her shadow moved, taller, straightening.

Dante murmured a negative.

"Must've been the wind." But she didn't return to her crouch over the computer display.

Darien hung there, one leg at an uncomfortable stretch, arms aching. Well, isn't this fun? If he didn't move, he would eventually fall, and that was one long drop. If he did move, they might hear him. Given Alvarez's alert stance and the occasional brisk gusts of wind, they might even see him.

Neither seemed to be looking down. He could do this. Darien cautiously slid his foot to one side, finding another place to set it, then did the same with each hand. At the sound of movement above, he instantly stopped, willing himself still, invisible, just plain not there....

"I'm going to check the transmitter," Alvarez said. She moved, unfortunately, towards Darien's side of the tower. He felt Quicksilver pour across his skin. Dangerous though that might be in this fog, if he could hold completely still, it could just work. In his altered vision, the laser light of the broadcast became brilliant silver, throwing Alvarez into sharp silhouette. She was near enough to touch. But instead of craning upward, she laid herself flat along the catwalk, reached down, and swung her hand through what should have looked like empty air.

She got a handful of Darien's hair, and the start shook the Quicksilver from him in a shower of glitter and ice.

Alvarez pulled his head back until he had to meet the shadow that was her gaze. "Well. Welcome home," she said, satisfaction quickly masking any surprise. "I may have underestimated you. Clearly, you weren't fooled for long." Her voice curved warmly, as if she might be smiling. "I think we were right, Dante and I. You are quite in tune with the principle of chaos."

Darien cleared his throat. "Um, I think I'm about to be in tune with the principle of gravity."

Alvarez let go of his hair and rose to her knees, giving him space. "Come join us up here. We have much to discuss."

Well, that sure wasn't an optional invitation. An open-framework steel tower, 800 plus feet above ground, at midnight, wasn't exactly conducive to escape. Especially not when your captor had just pulled out what might be a revolver. Darien reoriented himself, and climbed up onto the catwalk, level with the computer array. He found a perch where he could rest his behind and not risk falling with the push of a finger. "I don't know what you want to talk about. You're a terrorist, I'm a Fed, and there we are."

This close, the fog barely impeded sight. Alvarez smiled in the glow from the display, but didn't answer.

"How did you do that?" Dante had turned from his work, and was staring at Darien. "That little vanishing trick?"

"Vanishing?" Darien put every ounce of incredulity he could find into the word. "Must've been the fog. A trick of the 'dark,' so to...speak?" The last word was spoken right into the silencer that was now aimed between his eyes. "Whoa, what's that for? I'm not going anywhere."

"So tell us," Dante prodded. "To pass the time."

"I can't tell you what I don't know," Darien protested. "And you already know that I'm Darien Fawkes, and a federal agent."

"Name and rank," Alvarez noted. She pulled the gun back a few inches. "What about serial number?"

Darien shrugged. "I'm not military. But if you insist, it's 1-883-555-5647."

"What's that?" Dante sounded annoyed.

"My cereal number." Darien glanced from one to the other, the picture of innocence. "You know, the Kelloggs hotline."

He half expected the gun to go off in his face, but instead Alvarez lowered it. "Humor in the face of death," she observed dryly. "Either a man of iron will, or one who can bend to the vagaries of chance and chaos and survive because of it."

Darien grinned. "Oh, you flatter me."

"We should check in," Dante told her.

For a moment, Alvarez looked as if she would disagree. She looked at Darien again, then turned and handed the gun to Dante. "Make sure he stays put." Alvarez withdrew a few feet. Darien watched avidly--check in with who? Javier? Alvarez had the little box out again, along with her cell phone.

Alvarez waited for an answer, then said without preamble, "This is Javier. I am calling for an update. Yes?" She listened. "Well, see that you do. This city will pay the price for every minute you are late." That same echo followed her words, in a lower pitch. OK, that had to be some kind of voice scrambler. Maybe even one that mimicked Javier's voice.

The moment she disconnected, Alvarez turned to Darien again. "This," she held up the phone and gestured with it towards her broadcasting setup, "is just the beginning."

"Yeah?" Darien let the sarcasm flow. "So those other attacks, like blowing up that soccer stadium during a game? Those don't count, huh? What were they, practice?"

Alvarez was anything but rattled. She moved closer, though not close enough that Darien could risk grabbing or tripping her. "Where Javier moves, chaos follows," she said softly. "It is all the beginning, compared with what's coming."

Darien had thought it was bad when he'd had to put up with Dante's fanaticism, but at least the guy was quieter about it. Unless someone got careless (which he couldn't count on, with these two), he was well and truly stuck here. And there was no way the FBI could have put anything together yet, even if Jones had listened to Hobbes.

Fine. "'What rough beast, its hour come round at last...'?" Darien asked.

"Exactly." Alvarez beamed. "This is it, what we are made for. To usher in the breaking of order, of all that restricts the free creative pattern of life, the universe...."

"...and everything?" Darien couldn't resist adding.

Alvarez leaned right into his face, caution forgotten. "Yes, everything." Her breath was warm, smelling faintly of onion. Darien itched to take her down right then, and might have tried, except for the gun that Dante still held. "We will break civilization. Chaos was meant to mold the world, and we are simply freeing it to do so."

"I though that was called 'destruction.'" Darien stared right back at her.

Now she laughed, the sound oddly ordinary in the fog. "Then you must accept yourself as destroyer." Darien had a brief, unsettling vision of his own red-eyed reflection. "You carry a personality and a...secret..." Alvarez continued, "which make you unpredictable, unexpected, one who changes perception and reality simply by existing. You are a unique vehicle for chaos."

Darien's gaze flickered from Alvarez to Dante's weapon. "I guess I never thought of it like that before. How 'bout you fill me in?"

Inwardly, he was ranting. Hobbes, Jones, you better get your butts in gear. I am not going to sit here all night and talk crazy talk with terrorists.

The technicians in the testing room kept to their own stations, collecting data, trying programs, and most of all avoiding the terse discussion going on at the central table.

Dr. Leon and Agent Murchinson laid out the bare bones of the situation. "We still haven't been able to trace the source of the call," the doctor concluded. "But the entire system is getting more unresponsive by the minute. There's no doubt in my mind that Javier can do exactly what he's threatening."

"They're on the tower," Hobbes said, glaring at Jones.

Murchinson was the one who answered him. "We thought they might be," he said, tiredly. "One of our agents was using night goggles to patrol, and reported some anomalous readings from the top of the tower. I didn't know what to make of it, 'til the call came through."

Hobbes crossed him arms and rocked back on his heels, vindicated.

Jones glared at him, then turned to the other agents gathered around the table. "OK, people, options?"

"We could meet his demands," Murchinson said.

Tremont, the younger man who had held a gun on Hobbes two nights before, shook his head. "Those prisoners are all high-level international criminals. Even if we could persuade the various agencies to go along with that, come on, it's unthinkable to release these guys."

"If we sent men up the tower, they'd make us before we got halfway up there," Jones mused. "Probably start causing problems the second they get a hint that we're coming."

A petite Asian agent looked up suddenly. "Snipers," she said. Jones frowned, but she held up a hand. "With thermal scopes, sir. It'll make the fog a non-factor. Bang! And our problem's solved."

Hobbes looked daggers from the agent to Jones, who was nodding. "Jones, don't you dare! My partner's up there. How're they gonna avoid shootin' him?"

"That's kind of his problem." Jones sighed, then pulled Hobbes a few steps away from the table, and dropped his voice. "We both know he's not going to show up on the scopes, not with that trick of his."

Hobbes gritted his teeth. "Quicksilver is cold, doesn't mix with fog. He's not using it, and he will show up on those scopes."

Jones gave a long-suffering sigh, and turned to the agent who had made the suggestion. "Ishakawa, get our snipers ready, but hold off. We have to confirm friendlies before I give the go-ahead." She nodded, and headed for the door.

"Wind's picking up," Murchinson offered. "Think we could get a chopper close, if it clears enough?"

"Frickin' black helicopters. Tactics never change." Hobbes started pacing.

"Sure, call the base," Jones decided. He met the gaze of each agent, one by one. "Keep an eye on the weather, and until we know more, we're going to stall. Got it?"

Listening to Alvarez wax rhapsodic on the theme of chaos-as-savior was both fascinating and more than a little eerie. "Creation and destruction: the forces derive from the same source. Like the two sides of a coin, governed only by chance." She frowned over that analogy, and Darien decided it would be all right to interrupt at this point.

"I think I'm starting to get it." Darien remained still, relaxed and watchful. The fog swirled loosely between himself and his captors. His recruitment officers, if he wanted to get descriptive. "I'm just not sure you're going about this whole chaos-enabling thing the right way."

"There is no 'right' in this principle, Darien," Alvarez chided him.

Darien kept his voice slow, thoughtful. "OK. How about, a way that's more likely to succeed, then?"

Dante reached up from his crouch in front of the display to tap the back of Alvarez's hand. She acknowledged the signal with a touch of her own, but didn't take her gaze from her apparent protege. "Again, you fail to grasp the potential. 'It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order.'"

"Oooh, Douglas Hostadter." Darien shook his head. "But you didn't finish the quote. '...and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.'"

The words Alvarez threw back at him this time had the cadence of a creed. "'What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.' Kerry Thornley, The Principle of Chaos." She stared into his eyes from the shadows of her hair, and of the night. "Your life is a perfect example. A tangle of identities, of people, of right and wrong exchanging places."

Darien blinked away a flash of his image reflected in the black lens of Sebastian Brown's sunglasses.

"You are destined for this." Alvarez's whisper was intense. "By virtue of your very being."

Darien looked away for a moment. Could he...? Well, he didn't have much to lose at this point. He turned back to Alvarez, meeting her gaze firmly. "Say I believe you. What should I do then?"

Alvarez lifted her phone again, apparently checking the time. Then she cocked her head and turned the question around. "What do you feel you should do?"

Is she buying this? Darien crossed his fingers, while he made a show of pondering her words. Then he carefully held out one hand. "Let me make the next check-in call to the Feds. Isn't confession to others part of a changed life?"

Dante straightened with a hiss of protest.

Darien didn't glance at him. "Hobbes was right," he said to Alvarez, offhand, "I should've run that guy over when I had the chance."

Alvarez stood quietly, tossing the phone up and down in her right hand, regarding Darien with what he was beginning to assume had to be suspicion. Finally, she chuckled, and tossed the phone to Darien.

"I can't afford to be careless, you know. But by definition, I must take chances. Come. And don't drop the phone." Alvarez started moving towards the edge of the catwalk. Darien followed, one-handed and unbalanced, mindful of the gun behind him. Right to the edge of the structure they went, until Darien could feel the wind rushing unbroken into his face. He thought for a moment that he glimpsed stars through a tear in the fog.

Alvarez dragged Darien forward by his elbow, until he stood with his toes hanging off the edge of the catwalk. "Sit down," she said. Darien stared at her, incredulous. Alvarez stared right back until he sat, feet dangling and his free hand locked around one of the catwalk's braces. "No, not like that. Put one of those feet up back up here." After a moment, Darien did so, hanging onto the catwalk for dear life as half his body hung over empty space.

Alvarez reached out from her relatively safe seat and started to pry Darien's right hand away from its hold. "Take my hand."

"Hey, wait--!" Darien couldn't keep a grip on the slick steel with that hand tugging on it. Taking a risk, he let go and lunged for another handhold.

All he got was Alvarez's wrist. They both wavered for a sickening moment, until Darien leaned forward far enough to regain his balance. He still had the phone. And the rest of his well-being depended (literally) on the wrist of his captor. "Aw, crap. Crap." One shake, one little push, and he'd be plummeting.

"Just a precaution," Alvarez said sweetly. Her legs were crossed, her free hand wrapped solidly around a bar of the catwalk. Her fingers tightened around Darien's wrist in return. "Go ahead, just push send. Remember, we want to know what progress they've made, and be sure to let them know that we have no problem moving the deadline up if they need more motivation."

"Yeah, you got it." Darien sucked in a deep breath, tried to forget that he was this high up, and found the "Send" button by touch. He lifted the ringing phone to his right ear. Most of his focus was centered in his right hand. Can't let go, can't let go....

"Special Agent Jones," a voice barked in his ear. "Am I speaking to Javier?"

"Nope," Darien chirped. "My, uh, hosts thought you guys might like to hear from me for a change."

Jones stared down at the phone, mouth working. "Fawkes!" he finally managed. "What's--what's your status?"

The voice crackled slightly over the speaker, but it was definitely Fawkes. Hobbes crowded closer to the phone, a sick cold settling in the pit of his stomach. "I'm fine, don't need rescuing," Fawkes said airily. "In fact.... Hobbes, you there?"

Hobbes shoved up next to Jones. "Yeah. What's goin' on, partner?"

"This Alvarez--she's one smart lady. We've been having a very interesting philosophical discussion." Fawkes suddenly sounded quite serious, and Hobbes found himself wondering what the hell they could've been talking about. "It's pretty much a north/south kind of issue--either you think one way or you think the complete opposite. If she's north, I'm south, right? But she's got some good points. I might be coming around to her way of thinking about this chaos stuff." There was a muffled noise on the other end of the line. "Oh, and she needs to know if those guys are free yet."

"Those guys are terrorists!" Hobbes growled. "And it's takin' some time to put the order through for their release," he fabricated, as Jones shot him a horrified look.

"It might be for the best." Darien lowered his voice. "'Humans have a natural thirst for chaos, and war is the most readily available form of chaos.'"

Hobbes found his mouth dry, but the way his partner had phrased something nagged at him. "That Alvarez?" he asked, to cover while he thought it through.

"Nah. Frank Herbert," Darien said, sounding amused. "It's true, though. No matter how often we catch people like this, there are always more. Maybe it's time we let them do what they're supposed to do."

He had it now. Hobbes held up a hand to stop Jones breaking into the conversation. "So you're coming around to her way of viewing the world."

"To true north, indeed," Darien agreed soberly. "You might want to hurry up on those demands. Alvarez has no problem dropping a burning satellite into the bay."

"We're working on it," Jones assured him.

The line went dead.

Hobbes turned so fast he felt the whiplash. "Jonesy, that was a big frickin' clue. He wants us up the north side of that tower."

Jones' face tightened stubbornly. "I'm not sending my people up there on the word of one failed agent and another agent who may have gone over to the enemy."

"Oh, for the love of.... That's the absolute last thing Fawkes would...." Hobbes threw his hands up in frustration. "Fine. Don't blame me for the thousands dead."

Hobbes stalked out into the hallway, where he flagged down a passing tech. "Miss! Miss. Do you know if anyone here knows the tower? Maybe someone who's climbed it?" At her puzzled shrug, he took a deep breath and tried again. "What about maintenance?"

"Oh! Yes, we had a couple of them stick around tonight in case we had hardware problems." She pointed down the hallway.

Dunno how you did this all the time, partner. Hobbes reached for another handhold as cautiously as he could. Icy metal bit at his fingers. The darkness, even with the fog starting to shred into long ribbons, kept everything invisible. One of the two maintenance workers ahead of him carried a glow stick on his belt, but there was no other light. They were climbing much more efficiently, since they'd been up here "a whole lot, sir," the younger man had said. "Great view, where we're headed."

He just hoped he'd gotten Fawkes' message right. If he led them right into Alvarez and co., it'd be as bad as the discarded plan to "swarm" the tower.

There was a grunt from just above. Hobbes froze to his handholds, listening.

"Oh, here we go." The whisper barely carried. Hobbes climbed a little higher, enough to see the play of a tiny flashlight beam across the metal casing of a box-like object that seemed to be bolted to the tower's framework. "Portable generator or something."

"Can you turn it off?" Hobbes breathed in the guy's ear.

The other man answered softly. "Probably. If you give us a few minutes."

"Great." Hobbes edged out of their way. "I'm gonna locate my partner."

The wind gusted as Hobbes tried to guess which way to reach next. Voices! He climbed after them, as far as he could tell.

There was another gust of wind, and Hobbes craned upwards as the fog shredded. Above him, through the shadows of the tower's access catwalk, electronic lights blinked. One silhouette hunched over a flat monitor. Away to his left, right at the edge of the tower, were two more figures.

And that was his partner's voice. "You expect me to trust you? I don't see you in much of a hurry to trust me."

"I let you make that last call." Alright, her voice came from the same direction, so that had to be Fawkes and Alvarez over on the side.

"And didn't I do a good job?" Darien asked. Anyone else might have thought he was pissed. Hobbes heard something else--a desperate attempt at persuasion. He took a closer look, but couldn't make out quite what was going on between the two. Alright. Alvarez sounded distracted. He couldn't reach them without being spotted anyway.

Hobbes eased himself upwards, watching closely for any sign that the man near the electronic stuff was on alert. As he surely would be, if the power suddenly cut out.

"If you're worried that I'll interfere with what you're doing, you haven't been listening," Fawkes continued. Alvarez didn't answer. "Come on, if that's it, you could just handcuff me to the tower. What's wrong with that solution?"

Hobbes slid a careful foot from one rung to another, wishing he'd thought to wear crepe-soled boots instead of these dress shoes. If he could get onto their level without being heard, that would be ideal.

"Ah." That got Alvarez's attention. "Don't you see, even now? If I did that, I would be taking away the possibility of chaos manifesting through you. Which is just what I might need."

"You're not worried that chaos might manifest as my betrayal of your version of chaos?" Darien's tone was somewhere between incredulous and amused.

Carefully, as he emerged onto the catwalk itself, Hobbes braced himself in kneeling position and reached for his sidearm. The silhouetted man leaned over to check another piece of equipment. Hobbes took the time to line up a shot, waiting for the next clear moment.

"I didn't say that." Alvarez was definitely amused. "Why do you think I have you in this position?"

Hobbes caught his first glimpse of the man's face as he turned back towards the computer display. Dante. And he'd lined himself up perfectly. Hobbes fired.

Dante jerked back. Hobbes swore silently--he shouldn't have missed at that range. Before he could recoup, Dante shouted and came at him with reckless speed. Hobbes instinctively blocked, and the blow sent his gun spinning out of his hands, clattering and ringing against the tower's steel structure 'til it was out of hearing. He clung to the girder beside him, and just managed to bring up an elbow to deflect the kick that came next.

"Hobbes?" he heard Fawkes shout, as he kept moving, trying to keep his balance against the much more agile Dante. Punch, duck, move.... Get between the guy and the electronics. Punch...

Dante fell back, catching himself with both arms and a grunt of pain. Hobbes moved in, only to be surprised by a foot that kicked up into his solar plexus. An awkward kick, but a pretty solid hit.

"Hey, that's my partner," Darien yelled. "Will you call off the attack dog?"

With long lunges from safe footing to safe footing, Dante retreated. One hand sought his jacket pocket. Hobbes saw the move, and threw himself forward, knocking Dante's gun down the tower after his own. Dante leaped back again, and Hobbes followed, ducking under the steel wires that lowered to meet the catwalk, each moment a precarious mixture of balance and risk.

Until Dante took one more step backwards, grabbed Hobbes' sleeve as he dove after him, and pulled.

Darien nearly crushed Alvarez's wrist as he saw his partner topple out into open air. "Hobbes!" The shadowy figure grabbed onto the edge of the catwalk with a grunt. Another figure, Dante, climbed carefully to his feet and inched towards the clinging hands. Hobbes was kicking, trying without success to find a foothold.

"Alvarez, I'll vouch for him. You can tie him up, whatever you need to do, but if you let him die...." Darien put as much of his weight on Alvarez's grip as he could, stretching her solid anchoring.

Alvarez just smiled, and watched Dante's progress.

"I mean it." Darien tried for threatening, but given her reaction, it might have come out more like a whine.

"I know you do," she said, still not looking at him.

With great deliberation, Dante stepped onto the fingers of Hobbes' left hand. The agent gave a shout of pain.

Darien made the split-second decision he should have made minutes before. Dropping Alvarez's cell phone to plummet into misty oblivion, he used her wrist as leverage and pulled himself back onto the catwalk, reaching his free hand for an independent grip.

She reacted with the swiftness of anticipation, releasing him and pulling herself back towards the structure. Darien's fingers clung, but slipped over her smaller fingers to grasp thin air. Both hands out, Darien lunged for the tower, bruising his knees and hands as he grabbed for the nearest piece of metal.

After a moment of intense relief, Darien forced his eyes open to gain his balance.

Alvarez was hurrying back towards the computer setup. Darien twisted to his right. Dante still stood over the swinging figure of Hobbes.

"You are free to choose," Alvarez said, her voice carrying clearly. Caught in the first moment of moving towards Hobbes, Darien glanced back to where she crouched beside the main display monitor. "The deadline has moved up. Either save your partner--" There was a muffled shout from Hobbes, curses short of breath. "Or save this civilization everyone seems to care so much about. You cannot have both."

Darien stared at her for about half a second. Then he flung himself sideways along the tower's framework. Dante gave one last grind of his foot against Bobby's hand, then ducked away as Darien reached the place where he had been standing.

Hobbes dangled by one hand, now. Darien flattened himself on the catwalk, one arm anchored around a bar further in, and bent over to knot a fist into the back of his partner's jacket. It was enough for Hobbes to reach up and get a better grip. Darien pulled with him, and Hobbes wrestled himself to a precarious safety.

"Thanks, partner," Hobbes gasped.

Sure they were secure for the moment, Darien looked up. Dante had nearly joined Alvarez. Suddenly the enormity of what was about to happen slammed into Darien. Who was going to die tonight because he'd chosen to save one life?

Darien tugged himself upright, and headed for the computers.

"Hey Fawkes, wait!" Hobbes was shouting behind him, still breathless.

Alvarez was moving purposefully around the equipment, touching dials. Darien hunted frantically in the dimness for safe places to put his feet. Dante was already with her, and any moment they would send a command to one of those satellites and then....

"No," Alvarez snapped. "Impossible!"

Every single light on her display panel, monitor and all, had gone out. Faint afterimages burned in Darien's vision as he kept going. The fog had dissipated enough that the glow from the tower's top was invisible. Flooding his eyes with chilly Quicksilver, he continued.

Dante and Alvarez seemed to be having a rather major breakdown.

"Ha," said a satisfied Bobby, still behind him. "No power, no signal. Eat that, scumbags."

"Darien!" Alvarez's voice had gone deadly calm.

Hobbes caught up, and Darien steadied him with one hand. "Hey, that was my partner, not me." He reached into his pocket, finding the flashlight he lifted from the guard earlier. Its beam was narrow, but Darien could guess pretty accurately where to direct the narrow beam. It caught Dante full in the face.

"You take him, I'll get Alvarez," Hobbes said out of the side of his mouth.

"Alright, fine." Darien hefted the flashlight in one hand. He'd used worse weapons, even if the openwork beneath his feet was going to make this more exciting than enjoyable.

That was when the noise he had taken for the rush of the rising wind took on a thudding heartbeat of sound. A few seconds later, white light blasted the entire top of Sutro Tower. Darien closed his eyes against the double onslaught of light and wind.

"FBI!" The identification blared through a speaker system. "Freeze! You're surrounded!"

"Yeah, right." Darien cracked his lids open just enough to find the source of the searchlight, and to make sure that Dante wasn't trying to slip away. Then he leaned over to his partner. "You order the choppers, too?" he shouted over the chatter of the blades.

Hobbes shook his head. Then he hurried past Darien, headed for Dante.

Before they could reach him, there were shouts all around, and figures of men in combat gear swinging from ropes into the tower's structure. Some headed straight for the computer equipment. A couple climbed over for Dante. "You're under arrest," one of them barked, pulling the terrorist away from Hobbes.

His partner turned to Darien and Hobbes. After a moment of squinting indecision, he grabbed Darien's wrist, reaching out to cuff him.

Hobbes shoved him back. "What d'you think you're doin'?" he shouted. "We just saved your Fibbie asses! What charges you gonna arrest us on?"

"How 'bout obstruction?" the young agent yelled back.

Darien held his other hand out of the kid's reach. "Did you get Alvarez?" he asked. "She must've headed down the tower. Did you guys get her?"

The agent shrugged. "Come with me, please!"

Darien and Hobbes exchanged a despairing glance. The agent shoved them back towards the edge of the tower, where one of the helicopters hovered close enough to allow entry. The agent waved Darien in first.

Darien had thought that after hand-to-hand fighting 800 feet above ground, a helicopter would seem like a ride at a kiddie carnival. Nope. At least the tower had been solid under his feet. Hobbes joined him, the agent slammed the door, and the deafening noise of the blades whirled them away from any sense of gravity. Darien swallowed against the rebellion of his suddenly disturbed and very empty stomach.

They already had a fellow passenger. Jones shot them a murderous look as they fell into seats and held on. He was too busy shouting into his radio headset to pay them much attention, though.

"What? She can't even have reached the ground yet! So tighten the perimeter, pull some people out of the building to help, I don't care--!" The helicopter banked, and Darien lost the next exchange to the surge of noise.

An elbow poked him in the ribs. "Alvarez?" Hobbes mouthed, jerking his head toward Jones.

Darien shrugged. He had a feeling he might be more concerned once they'd reached solid ground.

The struts thumped the ground in landing. "What? I didn't catch that." Jones put a hand over his free ear. From the poleaxed look on his face, whatever his agent had to say was less than pleasing. "Don't tell me that. What do you mean, there's no--?" The thunder of the helicopter's blades began to slow, and his last word stumbled into the sudden quiet. "Are you absolutely--?" Jones listened for several seconds, then slammed his fist against the side of the compartment. "No! Keep looking!" he shouted at the unfortunate subordinate on the other end.

The blades slowed to an occasional swoop overhead. Darien eyed the distraught Jones warily. "Lose something?" he asked. Hobbes added an inquiring eyebrow.

Jones glanced from one to the other. "Where did Alvarez go?" he demanded.

"How would we know?" Darien stared. "You were busy arresting me, remember?" He raised his cuffed hands as a visual aid. "She went to mess around with her computers, they weren't working, and that's the last we saw."

Hobbes straightened slowly. "You tellin' me," he said to Jones in sheer disbelief, "that you didn't catch her when she came down?"

Jones glowered at him.

Darien let his head thump back against the seat. "Well, isn't that a huge surprise." His stomach had barely started to settle, and the news that Alvarez had slipped the trap sure wasn't helping that process along.

"How does that happen?" Hobbes asked, his tone quiet and deadly. "Dangerous terrorist, confined to a secure location, and she gets away?"

"She might've had an accomplice on the ground," Darien suggested. "All your personnel still alive, Jonesy?"

Jones looked alarmed at this possibility.

"Nah." Hobbes shook his head. "I don't think so. You know what I think? Jones really is just that incompetent. That's all there is to it." He folded his arms and skewered Jones with a glare of his own.

"Now wait a minute," the FBI agent said sharply. "I would've had her if--"

"If what, Jones?" Darien asked wearily. "You didn't manage to catch her at all. I wonder where that leaves our bet."

Jones drew a breath, but Hobbes beat him to it. "We caught Alvarez," he said to Fawkes conversationally. "Twice. She got away, but we had 'er."

"Yeah." Darien blinked at Jones. "You owe us, I think."

"You think that, huh?" Jones half-choked on the words. "I would've had her if you hadn't come barging in where you weren't invited."

Hobbes coughed, as if in shock. "You're the one who let her get away, Jones. What makes you think you woulda got within a hundred yards of her without us? We were this close to nabbing them both when your boys swung in like a buncha Tarzans and blew the whole operation to hell."

"You owe us," Darien repeated. He held up his cuffed hands again. "For starters, how about you undo these?"

"I dunno." Jones' mouth took on a stubborn set. "I heard the San Francisco P.D. might like to talk to you, Fawkes. Something about a murder over in Bay View?"

Darien felt his fingers curl into fists. Dammit.

That was all the trigger Hobbes needed to get up and shove Jones against the wall of the compartment. "It's not my partner's fault that you let an international terrorist escape," he hissed. "You leave him alone."

"You let me go," Jones countered.

Hobbes kept his grip a few seconds longer, just because he could, and then let go.

Jones brushed off his jacket fastidiously.

"You're the screw-up here, Jonesy." Hobbes hovered, fingers twitching. "Why don't you just face facts, and pay up?"

Jones crossed his arms and glanced from one to the other. Finally, he dug a key out of his pocket and leaned over to unlock Darien's cuffs. "You're still on 'vacation,' right? Scram. I don't want you interfering with the rest of the cleanup."

"Pay up," Hobbes insisted. He moved to block the exit.

Jones shoved past him, and climbed out of the helicopter without answering.

"You owe us!" Hobbes yelled after him, but the agent didn't turn around.

"That welcher," Darien said, rubbing his own chafed wrists. "Hey, Hobbes, your hand OK?" He leaned over to get a better look.

"Ah, I'll live." Hobbes flexed his bloodied fingers carefully. "You?"

"Starving," Darien said promptly. His stomach echoed the word with an audible rumble. "Do we have to go get the Hummer before we can grab dinner?"

All the way home, I thought about the Yeats poem Alvarez kept quoting, remembering the first part of it:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned…

That was sure what she'd been tryin' for, and probably would keep right on trying for. The thing is, part of me wondered if maybe she wasn't right. Chaos was actually a misnomer, according to the popular science magazines I'd read on the subject. When Mandlebrot first developed fractal geometry and chaos theory hit the popular press, who knew that what the rest of the world thought of as just random crap would actually turn out to have nothing random about it?

So, what if Alvarez was right? What if I was part of that not-random equation that she was modeling her version of 'apocalypse now' on? I wondered if Hobbes would ever get around to telling Jones that it was pretty good odds that Javier didn't exist. That he was a figment of Alvarez's imagination, and that the FBI had wasted years looking for a man who'd never been real. And most of all, I wondered how long it would be before chaos brought her and me back into the same orbit again...

"Oh, c'mon, Hobbesy, consider it a fashion statement. Besides, this way we both have one," Darien grinned down at his annoyed little partner who stood glaring back up at him.

Bobby swatted away the Alcatraz Swim Team t-shirt Fawkes held up against his chest in irritation. "Fawkes, I don't do tourist crap," he repeated for the third time. "It's bad enough you hadda take my picture in front of those damned sea lions," he added under his breath. "Besides. I thought that rag was for Eberts."

Darien laughed. "Hey, what's a vacation without a few photos of you-in-front-of?" he asked as the elevator doors opened, snagging the t-shirt out of the air as Hobbes' dismissive brush-off caused him to lose his grip on it. "OK, be that way," he added as he followed Hobbes out into the hall outside the Official's office.

In lockstep, they entered the office, still arguing over the merits of vacation photography, and settled into their usual places in the goldenrod Naugahyde chairs, the plastic squeaking with customary shrillness.

"Gentlemen," the Official interrupted their discussion brusquely. "Where is your report? I expected it on my desk two hours ago!"

Darien shrugged, his grin never fading. "Hey, boss, we were on the road, remember? Since when do we have to file reports on what we did on our summer vacation? This isn't fourth grade, last I checked..."

"Most people don't end up squarely in the middle of a top-secret FBI terrorist investigation on their vacations, either," he harrumphed shortly. "I expect both of you to report for a full debriefing at 08:00 tomorrow." He glared at each of them in turn. "And don't think that there will be any more paid vacations for either of you. Not for the foreseeable future!"

Darien groaned. "The sun hasn't even come up at that hour," he complained. "And whaddaya mean, no more vacations? Was this a vacation or wasn't it? I mean, if it was, then why do we have to fill out paperwork? Or be debriefed? And if it wasn't, then you still owe me four point four days, or whatever it was," he looked towards Hobbes for support. Bobby ignored him, his poker face in place as he stared impassively at the Official.

"It's either that or you fill out the standard incident report in triplicate -- tonight, before you leave," the Official insisted mercilessly.

"Oh, man," Darien whined, sounding for all the world like a petulant preteen.

The Official's dressing down was cut short as Claire came bustling into the office with Eberts in hot pursuit, the assistant carrying a stack of off-balance file folders in his arms which he placed precariously on the Official's desk, then had to scramble to keep them from sliding off onto the floor.

Claire ignored all this, her attention focused triumphantly on the Agency's head. "I've finished up my research on Gloria," she announced without preamble.

"And?" the Official snapped as the attention of everyone in the room focused on the Keeper.

"And," she repeated, "there doesn't seem to be any connection between her bio-engineered form of Werner's Syndrome and Darien's autoimmune issues," she said simply.

"So... there isn't some kinda weird thing happening in his head, like with the pineal gland and the Q gland?" Bobby asked hesitantly.

"No, Bobby, I'm afraid not. The severe form of Werner's syndrome I based my research on, and that Gloria was infected with -- and gave to Darien -- doesn't seem to have anything to do with the problems Darien has been encountering recently with his health. As far as any of my comparative DNA analyses have turned up, there is no trace left in either his or Gloria's system of the disease. Theoretically, any immune response based on the viral carrier used to infect them should mean a surge in T-cells and in white blood cells, as well as raised histamine levels. Gloria has none of that. Neither does Darien. In the tests I ran on Gloria, there was no trace of antibodies to the weaponized Werner's syndrome. Her cure is complete. As is yours," she said directly to Darien, who smiled beatifically back at her.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm taking that as good news. Maybe the worst is over, and the days of feeling like I'm 80 are over for good," he said cheerfully, stretching luxuriously, relishing the absence of the joint discomfort and general malaise that had plagued him to an ever-worsening degree for the better part of a year. He leaned over the arm of his chair and offered his left palm in the usual low five he and Hobbes used to celebrate small victories. Without even looking his way, Bobby's palm slapped into his, then their knuckles met in a gentle rap.

The Official's eyes narrowed as he glanced from Claire to Darien. "That still leaves us without a firm diagnosis, doctor," he snapped. "What if this ...problem... returns?"

Claire pursed her lips. "For the moment, we'll simply have to wait and see," she replied eventually, clearly not satisfied with that. "Darien, what was it you said Alvarez called you?" she asked, apparently changing the subject.

Fawkes pondered an instant, shifting uncomfortably. "When? I mean, what part of her whacko-babble are we talking about, here? She pretty much didn't stop talking about chaos theory the whole time."

"Oh, you mean the strange-thing. Whatsit -- strange attractor," Hobbes put in, snapping his fingers. "Strange is right. And Fawkesy, my friend, you attract more 'strange' than anyone else I've ever worked with," he grinned.

"Ha-ha," Darien snarked. "You should know, pal, since you're the strangest of all."

"It's an interesting observation, actually," Claire continued as if neither man had spoken. "A strange attractor is a mathematical point, or series of points, around which phenomena that appear random at first glance are actually arranged in a complex pattern. Any disturbance to the parameters of those accumulated phenomena can have a profound effect on the whole system."

"Ah yes, doctor," Eberts nodded sagely. "The butterfly effect." The blank stares from Hobbes, Darien and the Official prompted him to continue awkwardly. "In theory, if a butterfly flaps its wings over Beijing, the weather changes in South America. In nonlinear dynamics, even small changes are potentially magnified into large scale ones. But in some cases, the same strange attractor serves as a brake or stabilizer to the system, so that while effects might be more or less significant, the whole system eventually regains equilibrium... Though that equilibrium may or may not be the same as the starting point, pre-perturbation. The complex scalability of fractals is a good example of the stabilizing effect a strange attractor can have..."

Darien and Hobbes exchanged mystified glances.

"Eberts! In English, this time," the Official grumped.

Claire took over the explanations. "It's possible that whatever the problems are that Darien has been having with his immune system are in effect a perturbation of the kind Eberts mentioned. And if we consider the gland as a strange attractor, a physical point around which all of Darien's symptoms have been expressed, then it is also possible that the system is regaining balance... It remains to be seen whether that balance is the same as it was before, however."

Darien wasn't about to let her lack of enthusiasm get him down. He grunted, the science geek-speak effectively over his head to such a degree that it might as well have been Swahili.

"Hey, Hobbesy, wanna grab something to eat?" he asked as his perpetually empty belly rumbled a low protest.

"Er-hum!" The Official's pointed throat clearing dragged Darien and Bobby's attention back to the desk and the man behind it. "Reports first, food second," Borden stated, tone brooking no nonsense.

"In triplicate, if you please," Eberts piped up.

Darien rolled his eyes, caught Hobbes' gaze, and levered himself out of the chair with melodramatic effort. "OK, OK, but if I faint from hunger on the way to the elevator, it's all your fault," he groused at the Official.

"Don't worry, kid, I'll raid the snack machine in the lobby for you while you get started on the old paperwork," Bobby said as he too rose and followed Darien out of the office.

"The o-o-o-o-o-o-ld paperwork, huh?" Darien responded dryly in his best WC Fields impression.

"The o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ld paperwork," Bobby confirmed in the same inflection, the door closing after them.

Claire sighed. She could only hope that Eberts was right, and that the gland was indeed exerting a stabilizing effect on Darien's health. An irony indeed, given its long history of bizarre and unexpected complications to Darien's well-being...

"Doctor," the Official said impatiently in a tone that told her he was repeating himself.

"Sorry, sir," she apologized. "Yes?"

"What is your assessment of Agent Fawkes' health, overall?"

"At the moment, he seems to be in fine fettle," she said cautiously.

"I'm hearing a 'but' in there somewhere," the Official prodded her.

She sighed again. "But... his metabolic rate still hasn't shown any sign of returning to normal. While his immune system is for the moment stable, my concern is that it won't remain that way. Unfortunately, I think it's far more likely that the gland is a disruptive influence on Darien's system than that it acts to stabilize it...."

"So you're anticipating a relapse," Borden growled.

"I anticipate that as a possibility," she corrected a bit primly. "It's no more a certainty than anything else involving the gland."

The Official was silent for a moment as he glared at her contemplatively. "Doctor, have you ever considered the possibility that what's wrong has nothing to do with Fawkes' immune system, and everything to do with the gland?"

"Of course I have, but none of these problems were in evidence during the first two years Darien hosted it," Claire retorted.

"No, Doctor, they weren't." The Official paused for a long moment, expression hard. "Which begs the question: what about the gland has changed since then?"

Claire's eyes widened as the implication sank in. "Oh. My. God," she whispered as her knees gave way and she sagged into one of the two chairs the men had vacated a few minutes previously. "The cure," she whispered.

The Official steepled his fingers before him, glowering sullenly at her. "There was a reason I forbade you to give it to Darien, doctor," he said grimly.

"Oh, God... Arnaud botched it again," she breathed.

"Whether he did it deliberately or because he's a sloppy scientist, it only had to be accurate enough to convince you while he figured a way out of here, and the end result is the same, doctor. The 'cure' administered to Fawkes may end up being worse than the madness."

"Why didn't I see that?" Claire wailed softly, eyes darting to Eberts then back to the Official. A distant part of her took in the horrified pallor of Eberts' skin, one that doubtless matched her own, and took comfort in the fact that at least someone in the office besides herself cared more about the implications to Darien's health and happiness than about what the ramifications to the gland were.

"Willful blindness?" the Official suggested coldly. " A Pollyannaish view of the world of espionage? This isn't some piece of Hollywood drivel, doctor. Happily ever afters come few and far between in this business. I'd think your experience with General Grimmond and Gloria would have taught you that...."

The roaring in Claire's ears mercifully drowned out whatever else the Fat Man was saying as the implications whirled in her thoughts. Darien... what have I done?